Fuel briquettes comparison. Fuel briquettes or firewood, which is better according to experts and ordinary people

Ecology of consumption. Manor: Fuel briquettes or eurofirewood are still a curiosity, although they have appeared quite a long time ago. It will not be superfluous to figure out what advantages they have compared to firewood.

As an alternative to wood and coal, fuel briquettes are gaining more and more popularity. They belong to the solid type of fuel and are suitable for use in fireplaces and stoves of all kinds.

They have a number of advantages over other fuels, including environmental friendliness, making them an excellent home heating application. Next, we will take a closer look at what briquettes are, what they are made of, their advantages, and what are all of them better - firewood or briquettes.

Fuel briquettes are made from woodworking waste, coal waste, peat and waste from various agricultural crops. The production technology consists in the process of pressing these wastes under high pressure.

The only binding substance contained in the briquettes is lignin, which is contained in the cells of waste products. Therefore, briquettes do not contain any adhesive impurities to hold their shape and are an environmentally friendly product.

The pressing process also takes place under high temperature, which contributes to the melting of the surface of the produced briquettes. As a result, the surface of the finished product is more durable, which makes it more convenient to pack and transport.

Advantages of fuel briquettes

High calorific value

Fuel briquettes are distinguished by the ability of high heat transfer. Their calorific value is 4600-4900 kcal/kg. For comparison, dry birch firewood has a calorific value of about 2200 kcal/kg. And birch wood of all types of wood has the highest heat transfer rates. Therefore, as we see, fuel briquettes give 2 times more heat than firewood. In addition, throughout the combustion, they maintain a constant temperature.

Long burning time

Briquettes are also characterized by a rather high density, which is 1000-1200 kg/m3. Oak is considered the most dense wood applicable for heating. Its density is 690 kg/cu.m. Again we see a big difference in favor of fuel briquettes. Good density just contributes to the long-term burning of fuel briquettes. They are able to give a steady flame from laying to complete combustion within 2.5-3 hours. With the supported smoldering mode, one portion of high-quality briquettes is enough for 5-7 hours. This means that you will need to add them to the stove 2-3 times less than if you fired wood.

Low humidity

Humidity of fuel briquettes is no more than 4-8%, while the minimum moisture content of wood is 20%. The briquettes have such a low moisture content due to the drying process, which is an essential step in the production.

Due to their low humidity, briquettes reach a high temperature during combustion, which contributes to their high heat transfer.

Minimum ash content

Compared to wood and coal, the ash content of briquettes is much less. After burning, they leave only 1% ash. Burning coal leaves up to 40% ash. Moreover, the ashes of the briquettes can still be used as fertilizer, and the ashes of coal will still have to be disposed of.

The advantage of heating with briquettes is that the cost of cleaning and maintaining the fireplace or stove is much reduced.

Environmental friendliness

The choice of fuel briquettes for heating in the house is a great option for people who care about their health. Briquettes practically do not emit smoke and other harmful volatile substances, so you can fire the stove without charcoal even with a low chimney draft.

Unlike coal, the combustion of briquettes does not form dust that settles in the room. Also, since briquettes are fuel produced from waste, there is less damage to the environment.

Ease of storage

Fuel briquettes are convenient both to use and store. Unlike shapeless firewood, briquettes have a fairly regular and compact shape. Therefore, even if you try to put firewood as carefully as possible into a compact woodpile, they will still take up 2-3 times more space than briquettes.

No condensation on chimneys

Since firewood has a higher moisture content, during combustion, it forms condensate on the walls of the chimney. Depending on the degree of humidity of the firewood, there will be more or less condensation, respectively. What is bad about condensate in a chimney is that it narrows its working section over time. With heavy condensate, after one season you will notice a strong drop in draft in the chimney.

8% humidity of the briquettes practically does not form condensate, consequently, the chimney's working capacity is maintained longer.

Which is better: firewood or briquettes?

If we take into account all the advantages of fuel briquettes, which are described above, then briquettes are still the best choice for home heating. It is both environmentally friendly with minimal impact on the environment, efficient in heating and convenient to use. In addition, it is also more economical than other popular types of fuel, since its consumption is much less. Also, during its operation, you will never have problems with smoke in the chimney, since it practically does not emit smoke. Thanks to all these advantages, fuel briquettes are gaining more and more popularity among the owners of stoves and fireplaces.

Although at first glance it may seem that there is a significant difference in price between briquettes and firewood, but if we take into account their characteristics (heat transfer and density, since there is 40-50% less fuel in 1 cubic meter of wood than in briquettes), then the difference very little in price. And briquettes, moreover, have a number of other advantages over firewood. published

Fuel briquettes or firewood which is better? Briquettes or firewood, which is more profitable? These questions are of interest to many owners of private houses. Advertising of fuel briquettes made of birch shavings and needles suggests that they allegedly have twice the heat output, they burn four times longer than ordinary birch firewood, they leave less soot, and they take up less space. Is it really? Then, perhaps, it is worth conducting an experiment and finally making sure of the veracity or bias of these promises?

In general, it is worth saying that there is no ideal solid fuel. The use of wood, coal and various pressed waste has its own advantages and disadvantages, including financial ones. The task of every homeowner is to choose the most profitable option. What is better to heat: firewood or briquettes?

Firewood is an old, proven fuel. Wood is the oldest, environmentally friendly type of fuel. Of course, there are many types of logs, but birch firewood is the most popular.

Advantages of heating a room with birch firewood

Their most famous and indisputable quality is that such firewood ignites very quickly and burns for a long time, they have a high heat transfer.
Also, they do not "shoot" when burning, like, for example, softwood.
These logs have a very pleasant aroma due to the presence of essential resins in the tree. They are characterized by a positive effect on the upper respiratory tract of a person, since they differ in bactericidal and disinfecting properties. When these essential oils, together with the inhaled oxygen, enter the human body, it thus has a beneficial effect on the nervous, circulatory and cardiovascular systems. Therefore, if you are near a fireplace in which birch logs are burning, you feel relaxation, calmness, you feel harmony and comfort.
Firewood is compact, relatively light weight.
The cost of birch firewood from the "North-Western Wood Company" is small.

Cons of firewood

Perhaps the only drawback is the formation of soot by such firewood, because during combustion a resinous substance is released - tar, which pollutes the chimney and reduces draft. But if the cleaning is carried out in time, then this problem can be eliminated.

Advantages of heating briquettes

It should also be said about such a type of fuel as briquettes.

They are sold in compact packages.
They have a relatively small weight (about ten kilograms per package).
The price of briquettes is not high at all.

Disadvantages of this type of fuel

When compared with firewood, briquettes have a small heat transfer. Relatively low maximum heating temperature.
A ten-kilogram package is only enough for four hours of heating a small room.

Of course, it is up to you to decide, but from a comparison of firewood and briquettes, it is obvious that birch firewood has more advantages than fuel briquettes. You have probably already decided for yourself what is better to heat the stove: with firewood or briquettes. So make the right choice!

The fuel for kindling a bath must meet the following requirements: it must flare up quickly and give a stable, strong, long heat. At the same time, do not burn too quickly and do not smoke. Properly harvested, dried firewood from good, dense wood fulfills these conditions and is traditionally in demand among bath lovers. Alternative fuel - eurofirewood - is not yet so common, but its popularity is growing year by year. And there are good reasons for this.

Advantages of fuel briquettes

Burning fuel briquettes is not harmful to health, as they do not contain chemicals.

Fuel briquettes (Eurofirewood) are bricks made from compressed plant waste: sawdust, shavings, straw, grain husks, stems, etc. Particles of materials are interconnected under pressure using organic glue (or do without it at all, if there is enough raw material own resins).

Without a doubt, the production of fuel briquettes contributes to a more efficient use of natural resources. But eurofirewood has a lot of other advantages:

They have a heat output twice that of firewood (up to 5000 kcal / kg), while the heating power does not decrease during the combustion process. Such indicators of heat are achieved due to the high density and low humidity of products (for briquettes, the latter figure is 5–8%, for firewood it reaches 20%).
They burn out very slowly (about 4 times longer than firewood), which makes it possible to significantly reduce the amount of fuel consumed per season.
Do not form soot on the walls of the chimney.
Almost completely burn out, simplifying the cleaning process.
They burn smoothly and softly: they don’t spark, they don’t make noise, they hardly smoke, they don’t shoot coals, they don’t smell, they don’t emit harmful substances. In other words, they do not create discomfort for people who are close to the flame.
They are compactly stored in the form of neat stacks, in which they are delivered. Eurowood does not need to be chopped, put into woodpile, there is no garbage left from them.

The cost of briquettes is 2-3 times higher than firewood, but the difference in price is compensated by their low consumption. In addition, wood is much more voluminous, and therefore require additional shipping costs.

Firewood Benefits

Firewood is the most environmentally friendly, odorless material

Traditional fuel has the following advantages:

wood flares up faster and warms up the room;
they are inexpensive, especially if you are engaged in self-harvesting;
well-dried firewood has a high heat transfer;
when heated, essential oils are released that have a beneficial effect on the body;
create a special atmosphere thanks to crackling and beautiful flames.

One of the main advantages of firewood is its availability, because in many regions fuel briquettes are simply not to be found.

What is better to choose for a bath

The best combustion product is two-year-old firewood that has been stored in the right conditions.

On the question of what is better for a bath, fuel briquettes or firewood, there is no consensus.

The traditional bath for many has a special, almost sacred meaning. “I washed in the bath - that I was born again”, “The heat of the bones does not break”, “The spirit of the steam room is the holy spirit”, “The bath will wash away all sins” - the universal love for the bath was embodied in folklore. A visit to the bathhouse is a special ritual, during which they not only wash themselves, but also get rid of diseases, damage, slander, and are cleansed on a spiritual level.

A bath is, in fact, an everyday phenomenon, but real fans of the steam room reverently keep and pass on bath traditions. One of them is the heating of the bathhouse with "useful" firewood with a fragrant aroma of resins. From this point of view, the use of real firewood is advisable: they create a unique sauna atmosphere, for which everything is started.

In addition, lovers of a truly hot steam room insist: fuel briquettes do not provide the heat necessary for a real bath. Yes, they burn for a long time and stably, but they bring the temperature in the room only to a certain level, no matter how much you throw them up. And this often does not suit avid vapers.

Supporters of briquettes argue that the aromas of firewood do not get into the steam room anyway, since the heat from the fuel in modern stoves does not come into contact with stones. You can improve your health with herbal decoctions and steam from a broom. And briquettes are more economical and efficient, after their use there are no chips, dust and other debris left. They burn for a long time, so you do not need to constantly add fuel, you can safely enjoy your vacation. Briquettes can heat a bath quite well, so for those who prefer to bathe "without fanaticism", eurofirewood is just right.

So, taking into account the cost and consumption of briquettes and wood, we can say that there is no significant difference in price between them. Stably burning eurofirewood is a good solution for long-burning stoves. For kindling the same baths, many prefer wood that has been tested for centuries. Despite the fact that briquettes are positioned by manufacturers as a worthy replacement for traditional fuel, in order to avoid disappointment, it is better to start switching to them from small batches.

To heat the room, you need to install a heater, the technical characteristics of which meet all the requirements. Either wood or briquettes can be used as fuel.

Firewood

As for firewood, this is a classic option that is still in demand. A wood-fired stove can heat the whole house, filling the room with a special atmosphere of comfort and warmth. Quite often, even for fireplaces, they take firewood. After all, the natural aroma of wood can serve as a kind of air freshener. And in a modern interior, a bunch of logs will look harmonious.

The tree is sawn into approximately identical pieces, which in turn are chopped into small logs. You can equip a rack for storing firewood both from wood and from metal. When constructing this structure, the following requirements should be considered:

the lower shelf should be located at a certain height from the ground;
firewood should not be stacked very tightly, thereby providing natural air circulation;
it is better to divide the woodpile into several sections, so that in the future it would be convenient to choose firewood for kindling;
a canopy is necessarily built to protect the "warehouse" from natural precipitation (rain, snow).

A woodpile can be either a separate building or an extension to a house or barn. The most suitable shape of the structure is rectangular with side walls. The main thing is to follow the fire safety rules so that an accidental fire does not occur.

There are several ways to store logs:

stacked;
cells;
mop.

Tip: It is better to bring firewood into the house in the amount that is needed for heating for the day. It will not be superfluous to build a small room woodpile near the stove so that the firewood is dried a little before kindling.

Briquettes

Briquettes are a relatively new type of fuel, the raw material of which is sawdust, shavings, peat, agricultural waste, charcoal and much more. The manufacturing process involves pressing components under high pressure on special equipment. At the same time, a certain temperature regime is observed.

Advantages

Despite the fact that briquettes are a product of processing, there are a number of undeniable advantages of this fuel compared to analogues, including firewood:

relatively low price;
environmental friendliness;
high rate of heat transfer;
convenience of storage;
lack of condensate;
long burning time;
minimum ash content (cleaning the oven can be done much less frequently).

In addition, instead of destroying the forest, briquettes can be used, thereby burning the processed product made from the waste from the logging enterprises. Earlier we already wrote about and advised to bookmark the article.

Note: There are also fuel pellets and pellets. Differences in these species are only in size and manufacturing methods.

Storage and transportation

Due to the fact that the briquettes are made on special equipment, they have a fairly compact shape of the correct size. This allows not only to carefully transport, but also to store fuel. In addition, a storage room of small dimensions can be used as storage.

Unfortunately, the production of fuel briquettes is not well established, which slightly complicates the efficiency of order delivery. In addition, during transportation, be extremely careful not to damage the packaging material. After all, briquettes can simply crumble, be damaged and absorb unnecessary moisture.

Video: comparison of firewood and briquettes

It is difficult to give an unequivocal answer to the question of what is better - firewood or fuel briquettes. Everyone chooses the type of fuel that is more suitable for the price and technical characteristics. Many prefer to use coal in tandem, which as a result gives much more heat, and it lasts much longer.

It's nice to throw a couple of pine or oak logs into the fireplace. But here's what's interesting, fuel briquettes, which are pressed from wood chips or bark, turn out to be superior to wood. Not in terms of the aesthetics of the combustion process, but still in terms of very important parameters - in terms of heat (calorific value) and the duration of burning. Let's figure it out how is that possible?

The key fuel indicators are the calorific value, which depends on the content of organic matter and moisture content in the fuel. The density of the fuel is also of great importance. It turns out that 1 ton of dry (3-4% moisture) briquettes = 5 tons of firewood (20% moisture).

The humidity ratio determines the higher calorific value. And the more moisture the wood has, the more combustion energy is spent simply on evaporating water from the firewood!

Fuel briquettes are made at the expense of high pressure (300 atmospheres). They create a briquette with a very high density, a couple of times higher than that of a tree. As a simple manifestation - it is an experience to throw a fuel briquette into the water - and you will see how famously it goes to the bottom! That is, its density is higher than the density of not only wood, but also water. A briquette has a density 2-3 times higher than that of wood. And the density determines the duration of the combustion process.

A briquette can burn up to 5-8 hours, and as a norm, it has a burning time of 2-3 hours. For a stove or fireplace, longer burning is good. You can put briquettes and do not throw up fuel until the morning, the fire will last all night.
In ordinary wood there are pores with oxygen and due to this it burns quickly, and the briquette will burn slowly and give more heat than wood.

And some briquettes due to the shape - it is very convenient to fold. Such briquettes, I remember how a curiosity was shown on TV in a report about Japan, that they make excellent fireplace fuel from waste. It was back in the 90s of the last century.

Knowing these secrets about humidity, you understand why it is very important to have long-term firewood in the household - which, when naturally dried, reaches low humidity, and in addition, always have a supply of firewood near the fireplace itself and at the heater in the bath. So that they dry well. This will seriously reduce the time of kindling the bath - to a high temperature in the steam room.

Calorific value:

wood of natural humidity (40-55%) ~1500 kcal/kg

dry firewood (moisture content 25%) 2160 kcal/kg (pine), 2600 kcal/kg (birch)

brown coal 3910 kcal/kg

briquettes from wood waste 4400-4500 kcal/kg

black coal 4900 kcal/kg

When burning, briquettes do not emit burning, fumes or soot. When burning, they do not spark or smoke. When burning, it gives a high-temperature flame, so it can be used in a workshop where it is necessary to maintain a temperature for a long time.

The advantage over conventional firewood is the low ash content. Ash content - the percentage of ash remaining from the combustion of briquettes 1% of the mass of used wood briquettes.

But in conclusion, it is also important to dispel the fear - "We know - glue is used there, all these sawdust are glued into briquettes." Bonding into a single object is achieved due to the fact that part of the Lignin wood under the influence of temperature turns into an environmentally friendly binder.