Olive Branches

michael21 Image
12/18/2009 - 11:54

Hi All, I am cleaning my olive trees at the moment and would like a machine that could crunch and possible turn them into a brick for burning in a fireplace. I have a shredder and mulcher which is perfect for other things . Thnaks for your time.  Michael

Topic

Comment

Good idea, using your chippings/shreddings like this.  Hope someone comes up with a good way of doing it.  I haven't had any luck on a brief search. There seem to be quite a lot of commercial briquette presses available online, but not at domestic prices.  At the other extreme is this; http://www.redsave.com/products/briquette-maker,,225?SOURCE=GOOG&KEYWORD=briquette+press&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc also sold by Amazon more expensively - it says it's for paper, but it might work with shreddings????

 Hi , I have had a look but its fine for paper but I think it would break under some pressure with olive branches, thanks for the reply . Lets keep looking and we  may be lucky and find a machine. Regards

 ... would think the oil content in the bark and leaves would make it far too fast burning and prone to leaving heavy tar residue in the burner/flue. Given the amount of waste that is just burnt after pruning, I guess there isn't a commercial usage or someone would have set up in business converting the thousands of tons that are produced each year?

I guess you'll have to go out there and tidy up by hand, as everybody else is doing :-) For the remains, ie. the tiny olive branches, these are bent and bound into "bricks" ready to shove in the fireplace. Have a look at CAEB international's website (prunings biomass equipment). We don't have one of these binding machines ourselves, but our neighbour let us try.  However we found them unhandy, producing a high flame in short time. We're just far too busy/lazy for that and eliminate the branches with the tractor's mulcher directly in the field,  leaving the remains to fertilize the soil. ciao

  Hi All, Many thanks for all the replies , I would like to pick up on a couple of comments. I have a wood burning boiler that the olive brickets could be burnt in which would save loads of money and olive wood is a very good burner. Could Sablanico send me the CAEB website as I cannot find this please and I do welcome all your ideas. Many Thanks and a good Xmas.