DIY sawdust dryer

Surely many believe that waste-free housekeeping is just a dream. But there are materials that can be used even when they seem to be unusable. For example, the most common wood chips. Few people know how to properly use them in the country, at home, in the garden. And by the way, this material has many applications. Not only as a fertilizer, but also for construction and space heating. True, you need to use these woodworking residues after preliminary preparation. Therefore, we offer to find out how realistic it is to create such an aggregate as a sawdust dryer with your own hands.

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Application options for sawdust

The economical owner will never consider sawdust as garbage, but will think about how they can be used. And here the most various options for using this environmentally friendly material are possible:

• Sawdust is one of the best materials for heating rooms. Pellets can even be made independently of these woodworking wastes. Or extrude them into braces that are perfect for a fireplace or a bonfire.
• It is also possible to insulate the ceiling during the construction of a house or cottage with shavings. All store heaters lose this material, because analogues are not so resistant to temperature and humidity changes. For example, synthetic heaters during frosts are simply destroyed, and sawdust helps to avoid such troubles.
• Many avid summer residents know that wood shavings are a great, environmentally friendly fertilizer. It can hold moisture and even fight weed plants.
• Another way of using sawdust is possible even in a city apartment. Wood shavings make a great litter for pets. It also absorbs excess moisture and odors. For this purpose, sawdust is also used in personal subsidiary plots, for example, in a chicken coop.
• To increase the amount of smoke when smoking meat, poultry or fish, you can add slowly smoldering sawdust to the chips that you always use. Each type of wood has a certain aroma suitable for “its” product.

Important! If you plan to use wood shavings as fertilizer, then special preparation is not needed. But for all other purposes, you will need a dryer for sawdust with your own hands, because fresh wood contains a lot of moisture. Over time, it evaporates and the material decreases in volume. This is especially true for the use of chips as a heater.

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Types of Dryers

The problem of removing excess moisture from sawdust is relevant both among builders and amateurs to make something in their own carpentry workshop. At the same time, drying wood at home can save a lot on its purchase, because dry raw materials always cost more than wet ones. Choosing options for the manufacture of sawdust dryers with their own hands, it is worth knowing what types they are.

Dryer drum

Do-it-yourself drum dryer for sawdust is the most popular and proven over the years method of preparing the material. As the name implies, excess moisture is removed from the chips during rotation of the drum. Inside the device are blades that capture and mix the material. At the same time, hot air is supplied to the drum, which speeds up the process of evaporation of moisture.

Here are the features of such a device:

• The advantages of a drum dryer for sawdust with their own hands have long been appreciated by all builders who use this device also for working with sand, gravel and other materials that need to get rid of excess moisture.

Important! Such a unit has been tested for years of use even in the food industry. In fact, it is not entirely appropriate to talk about the advantages of a traditional and fully debugged technology, because by and large in its class there is nothing to compare it with.

• The disadvantages of a drum dryer for sawdust do it yourself are its size. As a rule, this device is a bulky design, the installation or transportation of which causes a lot of problems.

Aerodynamic dryer

In second place in popularity is a do-it-yourself dryer for sawdust on the basis of aerodynamic technology. Wood chips dry from exposure to hot air. Such a dryer usually consists of several units:

• heat generator;
• drying line;
• fan;
• sifter;
• cyclone;
• oven.

Wood chips fed into an aerodynamic dryer are both crushed and dried. This unit takes up much less space than the previous one. This is its main plus.

The main disadvantage is the complexity of the process itself, in which the following main points must be taken into account:

• total area of ​​treated particles;
• feature of the raw material itself;
• dryer parameters.

Due to the complexity of the process, aerodynamic technology and inferior in popularity to a drum dryer for sawdust with your own hands.

Belt dryer

Belt or conveyor dryers are used for various bulk and fibrous materials, including sawdust. The principle of operation of this unit is quite simple:

• the material moves along an endless tape - one or more, stretched between the leading and driven drums;
• drying is carried out with hot air or flue gases moving along the belts or in a cross flow.

Important! This method allows to obtain very high quality material, but it is designed for large volumes. The price of the tape unit is appropriate, therefore, it is used mainly in large industries. Do-it-yourself drying is not a good option for drying sawdust.

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Drum dryer

Now we offer to consider how to make the most popular option - a drum dryer for sawdust with your own hands.

Important! Using it, you can reduce the moisture content of raw materials from 60% to 10-12%. The principle of operation is that the chip in the process becomes lighter and moves along the pipe. The main advantage is that without reaching the desired percentage of moisture, the sawdust will not be able to move to the bunker of the finished product.

Training

In order to mount a drum dryer for sawdust with your own hands, you need to determine the place of its installation. Typically, such devices are in garages or sheds. Any utility room is also suitable, the main thing is that the area allows.

Important! The dimensions of the finished dryer are 7 meters long, 2 meters wide and 2.5 meters high.

The package of the finished device includes:

• U-shaped pipe or coil;
• Thermal unit - an ordinary oven is suitable as it;
• Hot air blower;
• Cyclone for the collection of finished raw materials.

Important! With this machine you can process more than two tons of raw materials per day. With this electricity consumption will be 550-750 V per hour.

Assembling a drum dryer for sawdust with your own hands should be done in stages:

1. Dig a hole first. Its dimensions should be 0.4 m in width, 1.2 in length, and 0.5 m in depth. Then fill it with concrete. On this concrete base, make 4 metal legs, each 5 cm high.
2. Put the fan casing on a concrete base, and weld the edges to the metal legs on all sides.
3. Install the screw dryer itself. Secure its hole with 4 bolts to the air outlet.
4. Set the separator.Attach it with screws to the air outlet. Make a weld seam below the splitter.
5. Connect the body and elbow of the pipe to a support mounted on concrete. This way you get a ventilation adapter.
6. Mount the dryer, connect the body and elbow of the pipe to the floor support.
7. Now attach the knee to the dryer. If necessary, submerge the base of the stove in the ground.

Experienced craftsmen do not recommend using a drum dryer for sawdust with their own hands without commissioning and trial run in any case. At this stage, you must perform the following steps:

1. Melt the stove over medium heat, withstand this temperature for forty minutes. So you remove the moist air.
2. Then increase the temperature and load a trial batch of sawdust into the machine.
3. Select the required speed of rotation of the dryer and loading of raw materials.
4. If chips accumulate in the loading opening, slightly block the air intake opening. Alternatively, you can put a little furnace slag on the grate, thereby reducing the amount of air entering the device.

Important! Each time you start the drum dryer for sawdust with your own hands, drive the system idle for 10 minutes to pull the excess chips from the pipe. If you hear jitter or crackling sounds from the fan during operation, most likely a lot of dirt has accumulated on the blades. Turn off the dryer and clean the fan.

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Stock footage

As you have seen, such a complex unit as a sawdust dryer with your own hands - everyone can do it. By the way, very often, as a pipe, craftsmen use old metal barrels that are welded to each other. The main thing is to observe precautions and safety during installation and during operation in order to avoid accidents.