Can you turn Peat into Fuel Briquettes with Hydraulic Press? 

In Ireland we use a tool called a sleán to cut it into bricks and stack these up to dry all summer to use as fuel in the Winter

Tries to build fire fuel accidentally builds fire proof panel

Peat is a common fuel in parts of Scotland and Ireland. It burns more like coal, so there is little flame compared with wood but it smoulders and makes hot embers when you burn a full load of it. Like a coal fire it benefits from being burnt on a grate to allow air flow from below, up through the embers. Wood prefers to be burnt on a bed of ash with air drawn in from the sides.

“It’s designed to extrude shit” my favorite quote

There are a few videos on RU-vid about pressing leaves into briquettes/logs for heating. I, for one, would love to see you guys make your own version of leaf based briquettes!

At first I thought it was cow manure. LOL

Bro the spider on the plastic bin at 2:29

That thing would burn for hours, smoky for sure. I would bake it for an hour at 350, to really dry it out

You could press bread and look if it works like a heat shield too afterwards. It is a pretty good heatshield in it's natural state already so it would be interesting if pressing it makes it better or worse.

"So now it's briquette maker 5 million" Even after all this time, this still made me fucking laugh. Why does that joke never get old?

"it looks like you could you it as a heat shield on spacecraft" nearly brought me to tears laughing

I just poured a glass of peated Scotch, refreshed RU-vid, and...oho.

2:29 RIP spider homie

I think they would make good patties for vegetarian burgers.

It cracked from the mouisture trying to escape when you dried it out at the end, you should have dried the bits first in the oven then pressed it down into the briquette

Where I live peat was (and occasionally still is) used as fuel in homes. Peat works as a fuel because, when prepared traditionally (cut into blocks, built into walls with gaps, then wind dried for months outside in various different arrangements to dry out all sides of the blocks), you end up with all the moisture out, but there will still the hydrocarbon fuel left in it. That is what burns. When you look at peat banks, you can often see the blue oily sheen in it. I think compressing it and drying it at such a high temperature in the masonry oven has probably evaporated the remaining fuel, and all the rest is just compressed moss that isn't very flammable at all. The different colours are probably different levels of decomposition - the black peat will be more decomposed (basically, getting closer to coal than being soil).

Had me laughing when you said "its surprisingly moist" ...

I recently rediscovered this channel. Fell in love with it because of the charming simplicity, not too much bells and whistles. Just a guy and his wife squashing things with a hydraulic accent with laughs and an awesome finnish accent to boot. Glad to see you guys stayed true to who you are

You could also try bales of straw or shredded paper! I remember my grandmother making her own "logs" using damp newspapers compressed into a brick and dried.

In Canada we used to have a product called Presto Logs, they were essentially sawdust pressed into long cylinders that resembled logs. It was difficult to get them to light on fire but after they were lit they burned nicely.

My local store once sold charcole briquettes that were impossible to light, now i know how they did it

2:52 when your fart comes with surprise

“Briquette maker 5 million” 😂

I’ve always loved this channel of course, but the fact you’re from Finland is icing on the cake. My grandma was from Pori. Keep up the great work, love you guys! 🇫🇮 🇺🇸

Him: It’s like moist, Her: after touching it, jaa 😂

Pressed peat briquettes were very popular fire material in Estonia up to mid nineties or maybe even later. There are lots of peat bogs in Estonia and a lot of hoseholds with ovens used briquettes as main fuel. You must start the fire with wood and then add the briquettes. They catch fire slowly but once you have them burning they burn like hell and give a lot more heat than wood. Must be careful because lots of unexperienced briquette burners literally fried their ovens.

8:13 "Extremely dangerous _gringos_ ..." 🤣🤣 True dat

I run a machine shop also and I mess with magnesium a lot. I mixed some magnesium shavings into some sawdust and pressed them into a briquette. Them suckers burn real hot!

2:00 every morning after my coffee

I used to design cylindrical enclosures for oceanographic instrumentation and some were designed to go extremely deep. There is data for piston style O-ring applications. Clearances must be extremely small. Also, O-rings are made in various hardnesses (durometer). What is not well known to many is that O-rings must move when under pressure. They no longer have the original cross section, but cram tightly towards the seam where they might be pushed out. The cross section becomes sort of triangular under high pressure or perhaps a little more accurately sort of like a piece of a pie shape. Higher pressure situations also can pose a risk. If something leaks, then there can be high pressure INSIDE with low pressure outside such as you standing next to it. When disassembling the item, it can have the effect of an explosion. For this reason, sometimes bleed screws are added to the design which can be safely loosened to vent possible internal pressure. Or the enclosure can first be filled with an inert liquid which, of course, can't compress. I don't think there was any internal pressure risk in the experiment here because there just wasn't that much volume compressed in the first place.

"I'm not going to go totally crazy!" Proceeds to squash sh!t in his hydraulic press. Oh how I love this channel!

This is hilarious 😂 I'm making briquettes in a small press, some I roll up in my hands and latest trials are with a Coffee tin and Jam jar homemade press. It's working brilliantly But with Coffee and Wood shavings that I leave to Compost first. A two hour burn is easily achieved. Brilliant video. Thank you Jamie

Why not put the pre-pressed moss into the brick oven? Dry it before it presses and the water can escape more easily

The beat briquette used to be quite common heating material quite lately in Estonia. I do not know how was it made, but I suspect something similar way you did. Note: Lighter material has more not decomposed material thus burning, dark one is close to the regular dirt what is unburnable.

I love that your wife helps with the channel and so much fun! You guys make really entertaining stuff!

The smell alone makes a turf (aka. peat) fire absolutely worth it. It's incredibly comforting, homely and instantly recognisable too!

I can’t believe it made a PERFECT piece of plywood, but then refused to burn! What a rollercoaster of emotion.

I would stick to using it to improve garden soil. I think it would burn better with very little compression but that was interesting.

Most European episode yet

I'm from the Ireland and we have being burning peat for thousands of years ,we cut peat and call it turf ,it is very good for burning,it has a lot of Ash, the Ash is useless ,it contains around 20 mj of energy per kilo ,traditionally we would cut itaround may and leave it to dry till about September, weather dependent , The Turf needs first cutting and spread on a dry surface then turned,footed ( small stacks) in general it is burned during winter ,but if left in a pile for a year it is much better as wood would be ,it can be cut by hand with a slain or in a hopper pulled by a tractor it is squeeze out like a sossage ,the light colour turf is from the top and we usually throw it back into the bog hole from last year ,the lower you go the darker the turf gets ,the better burning it is except the lower few cm ,if you look up turf cutting or peat cutting in Ireland you can learn a lot if you have time to do this then you are sitting on a very good source of fule but a lot of Ash

Alternative title: baking the most compact loose snus prilla

In Ireland there has been a company called Bord Na Mona who produced compacted peat moss (called briquettes) for burning as fuel. My dad worked for them for several years fixing and maintaining the machinery. They are a long-burning efficient fuel source but peat is not easily renewable as far as I know...takes many years for it to form in the ground

2:28 Hello spider friend.

we use to make waste paper bricks from wet newspaper the summer before needed much inn the same way only with a smaller press ... worked great !

who you gonna call? hydraulic press channel! ;)

The air between the fibers is probably the magic sauce that makes peat good for fire starting.

I thought it would work as fuel, but my expectations were shattered

We got some old technique in an area thats called „ hohes venn“ where our grandparents cut „torf“ into chunks , piled them into small towers and let the wind dry it. An it worked as fuel for a long time , but what you are trying seems like lighting a diamond by a match 😎. The cracks are occurring because the puck takes moisture back from its surrounding air ( similar to a compressed dry compressed sponge ) , so solution: less force , more natural drying and it should work. ( the old process took up to 6 month to get from wet stuff to usable fuel““

I defenitly need an explanation why the cute "Slimer" had to be crushed.

“because this is not designed to make briquettes, it’s designed to extrude shit” hilarious 😂

I wonder if you added an accelerant before pressing it if it would work. Like lighter fluid or kerosene or somthing

Usually, in factories where charcoal is made, they put the raw materials into a dryer before pressing in briquettes. I also believe they add corn starch to the materials as they're preparing the press them.

"doesn't seem dry enough" could also be those large holes in the plate.

FYI something compressed to this degree is not porous enough to allow oxygen to penetrate to allow combustion. You Will merely scorch the outside until it wears away. Fire bricks are very porous and contains wax that will melt away allowing combustion. If you mix this with wax and compress it less it will then burn like a fire brick.

When youtube page refresh is faster than notifications😂😂

Make the brickets about 1/32 the size. I'm possitive size was the main problem here, but there's also some science you need to read in this comment. You also wouldn't need to dry it out if you make a vacuum mold capable of handling wet. That needs a very large sustained fire to release all that carbon. Nothing short of a blast furnace would light that sucker. Think about how charcoal brickets are, they don't get much bigger for a reason, they would have trouble heating up, drying out, and ultimately releasing the pent up carbon for field. It's why they often mix charcoal with things like sodium nitrate. Keep in mind also, Carbon ignition temperature is 700c (that puny torch is never getting it there), as where carbon bi-sulfide (charcoal with "autostart") is only 149 degrees. Consider adding a kerosene fuel or a sodium nitrate mixture when pressing the brickets. Kerosene might be easier to get your hands on, and safer to work with. However, store them wrapped in seran wrap or else it will all evaporate out. - sources; google it.

Next time you're out in the peat bog, find one of those ancient bog bodies and use it for the extra content. Those things are scary.

That would be perfect ecological, fireproof building material actually.

@Hydraulic Press Channel Been watching/subscribed since basically the beginning. Why not use dried cow manure in the press for fuel briquettes? I know that you can burn dried cow droppings. Give this a try.

2:28 - Spiderbro learns how to poker face.

Well thats actually how fuel briquettes are made, using hydraulic technology.

@2:05 ... this looks like me in the morning after 2 cups of coffee ...

I will never get over the fact that you say "hoo-draulic press"

Before I watched this, I saw a video on the traditional Irish practices of harvesting peat. They let it dry in the sun for months.

Well, it kinda looked like sub-bituminous coal.

I love the simplicity of this channel just going to put this shit in here no fancy jump cut's or over complicated explanations

Turd maker 5 million

In germany peat was cut directly from the ground in shape of bick bricks traditionally and used as a fuel when dried. Still sometimes in summer when it is to hot, peat fires occur, where the fire crawls under the ground surface and the firefighters have to cut barriers in the ground and soak the whole area with water

Can we get a petition going to change the channel to the “Hoodrolic press” channel?

Peat is used as a low heat fire for slow cooking, root vegetables, stews etc. Not such a hot fire for warming a room, you have to sit on top of the fire in order to get any benefit..Try spending a coastal western British winter being warmed by one.It won't be a problem if you normally live above the Arctic circle.

Now we know how fruitcake is really made!

who the hell would click a video with a thumbnail that says "5000 years old plants"? that doesn't even parse as English ... fack I clicked it just to say that. YOU WIN THIS ROUND

What i learned is that ancient turds are everywhere in finland!

We have peat fuel briquettes in Finland and they work just fine, just produces lot of ashes. My parents used to burn them for few years back in the 90s. The peat tiles looked so weird as a kid and i didn't think they would burn at first.

Thought “dung” from thumbnail.

I was going to suggest a dehydrator for the peat to get every last bit of moisture out first. The compressed disk still looks wet and you said it feels moist.

You basically made lignite, a form of low grade coal.

You can't just take any peat to dry and press it, it has to be rich in oil/resin/tar content. There are only a few places on earth where peat is actually good for burning. Such as Ireland. Furthermore, unless it's the very good stuff, you have to mechanically dry it for a long time. I.E, when they discovered that one could use peat as a fuel in this manner, they burned off a lot of peat just to get dried peat that will burn in smaller quantities inside a small furnace. Peat is by no means an efficient fuel to use, but it is easily extracted and somewhat easily processed so that's why it's used in favor over wood. But you need BIG batches of the stuff to get something useful out of it.

Now raise the pressure and make diamonds and make that REAL RU-vid money!

The brown peat I think has iron in it. The brown is the oxidation of the iron. People use to get metal from peat along time ago to forge farming, hunting, cooking and fighting implements.

"fossel fuel? i would shut down this hydralic press channel if im president" - Joe Biden

Here in Scotland a lot of rural towns and houses like to use Peat as a heating fuel. My Gran used to sleán a load of Peat in the summer and store it in a drying shed for when winter came. I loved the earthy smell from burning Peat in the winter. - *FUN FACT:* The water in Loch Ness takes on a nice reddish brown colour which is caused by rain water draining through the Peat on the hills. This Peaty water is also drinkable, basically you can literally drink straight from the Loch water and to those not in the know (tourists etc) it looks like you are drinking muddy water, lol.

In civil geotechnical engineering we occasionally have to dry samples of peat soils to characterize their organic content. We do this in an oven at about 100 degrees Celsius for 12 to 24 hours.

Maybe use some when you roast your beer malt. I like some of the Scottish beers that are somehow made with peat smoke flavor. They're also interesting because just a little bottle has all the alcohol I'd typically want in an evening. Where I grew up, our back yard seemed to be made of stuff midway between peat and coal. When it dried, you had to be careful with fires because the ground would catch and smolder until it rained. It smelled like burning tires. Also when it flooded it would cover the water in oily rainbows. There were nice pieces of wood in it soft enough you could squeeze the water out of it with your hands, but if allowed to dry it was an attractive brown color and full of large "worm holes." I don't know how deep it went but it was easy to push a full length of rebar into it. I once sank into it almost up to my neck. Like quicksand, moving seemed to suck me in deeper until I was inches from drowning. Fortunately my friends were there and pulled me out with a sapling. It was freaky having a worm's eye view since the area was crawling with poisonous cottonmouth snakes, the only species I've met that will actually chase people.

Normally compressing fire briquettes. You might need longer chamber with filter well which sometime it does break lol. Or other way is 5+ layers of 200 fine mesh place or weld it into press tool part. The mesh one is most used and easier to repair, normally you need mesh filter to extract the liquid contents out from briquette. It similar method to a french press coffee but more compressing down with pressure. I used to worked in cider factory, we had manually compress apples with giant compressing wheel for while until we move on to hydraulic juice presser which we convert into briquettes press.

I suspect that it will burn if you get it hot enough. Coal is the same way. This was a long time ago, in 2000, but I flew into Tempere in the summer and got in at 2 AM. We made it to the bar for a drink, and everyone was drinking water, it was strange..... I love Finland! Kiitos!

I like buying cheap bricks made of compressed saw dust for my fireplace. They smoulder more than they burn, but they put out a hell of a lot of heat. :-) I gotta get a wood fire going underneath them first if I want pretty flames.

That spider at 2:28 must of been terrified.

There probably is more energy than you think, even if it's not burning. You'd have to do calorimetry to determine what the heat of combustion of the peat briquettes is. The easiest way is to get a propane burner, a beaker (or other container) with a set amount of water, and measure the time it takes for the burner alone to raise the temperature from a starting temperature to an ending temperature (say 20°C to 40°C). Then repeat the experiment with the same amount of water, same temperature range, same burner, but put the peat briquette between the burner and the container. If the second time is significantly faster, then the briquette is releasing a good amount of energy. There's some formulas that I'd have to look up to calculate the particular numbers.

Once you dry it then you can use it as a dense fuel brick. This is a good idea for camping. You have to mix it with some kind of fuel

You would need to kiln dry either the loose material or the finished briquette. You can see there's still loads of water/steam coming out when you try to burn it, I don't know if it will effectively compress into a brick if you dry it out before compressing it though

I love how good your English is but how strong your accent still is, I find it really pleasing!

They sell bricks of compressed peat for fuel in Ireland called briquettes, they burn really hot like coal but only if the fire is already hot. They’re smoky, produce a lot of ash but they burn for so long it keeps the fire going all night.

I have seen some take burnt thick brush/grass and crush it into charcoal blocks but it also has holes going through it and they burn them. Grass is very easy to grow and normally a nuisance with waste. Could try different low oxygen burnt things, Charcoal from wood, Some from grass and even some from paper and cardboard, Could also try cotton clothing since they use that for fire starting when its burnt in low oxygen container to get charcloth.

When you press peat you also press the oils out of it, you can notice it in some machine cut peat, but if you cut it by hand you get better burning peat. Great experiment, 😉

"What do you do for a living?" "I smoosh stuff on RU-vid." "...Pardon?" Only America could make something like this possible. Cheers to your awesome life.

Very interesting, thought it would burn with the wood. Must still be to much moisture even with the backing. May be bake dry before compressing and compressing less so air can get to the material. Thank You.

Irish people have been using peat for fuel for centuries. Peat smoked whisky is amazing.

That poor green ghost looks like he was trying to give you a hug

I bet it would burn well in a forge. It just needs air flow like burning coal. If you think about it, pressed peat pellets are concentrated carbon, much like coal but a little less dense.