Saw Mill Waste

Google waste recycling (local area).

Here's some ideas.

Either bag it and sell it yourself, or find a company that can use it to come and get it.

If you bag it on site and sell it as organic garden mulch you can probably make a profit from it.

further to the comprehensive paper posted by Kramat above ;

we have local timber mills who dispose of it to workshops who use it for oil spill cleanup

another use is stable bedding for horses

export to compressed particle board and paper manufacturers ( usually only want bulk supply )

wood chip can be heated inside an enclosed vessel to produce flammable gas which will run a vehicle - coke or coal was used in the same way in europe for decades but its not very practical lol

For a small facility, local agricultural uses are probably your best bet. The sawdust is commonly used in poultry operations as bedding, which is removed and composted periodically - if you hook up with a poultry farm that's well matched to your scale, you could make an arrangement to have them come and remove the sawdust from your mill on a regular basis. I doubt that you will find someone to pay you for the material, unless you are offering the service of collecting and delivering it to them, which is not likely to be very economically rewarding.

Kramarat's link is a nice one, and gives detail about specific grades of sawdust which can be made into a value-added product. Whether this is viable depends on your local economic context and demand, the grade of the waste and suitability, and the distance to market for the product.

Use it to heat the work shop & offices also heating hot water,also if there are slabs or log offcuts put a sign out saying free logs also free bedding. I would love to have enough waste to be able to heat my workshop.

Bazzer

Can you make chipboard?.

No unless you have the quantity and very expensive plant,but you could make logs quite easily but again you'd need a press & a bonding agent.

Bazzer

It need not be done in every saw mill but by collecting the sawdust from several sawmills a plant could be setup to make chipwood planks.

convert to wood pellets and burn them on biomass burners replacing gas/furnace oil burners. Save 30% ton 70% on fuel with payback within 1 year. If not bag them and sell to me.

It's also used for waste paint. Paint is poured in sawdust, allowed to dry, and thrown away.

Really. This is new. Anyway sheer waste of saw dust if in ample quantity.

We were doing it in the 80's, back when the EPA really started baring it's teeth.

I'm sure there are much better uses for sawdust, but if any arm of the government tells us to do something, we'd better do it or suffer the consequences. Not justifying polluting, but there seems to be no logical end to the rules.

From one site:

Water-based paints

Do

�� transfer as much paint as you can from rollers, brushes and trays back into the paint containers at

the end of the day or job

�� transfer the water used to clean one roller tray into the next tray to be cleaned, and so on

�� spin brushes and roller sleeves (if possible) into a waste paint drum before you wash them; let the

waste paint dry and dispose of it as solid waste

�� wash brushes and roller sleeves in a pail using as little water as possible

�� re-use the water used to clean painting equipment where practicable (for example, use it for

cleaning again the following day)

�� place all wastewater from equipment cleaning into larger drums and allow the solids to settle

�� dispose of wastewater by tipping it on to a flat, grassy area or area of soil that can retain the

liquid; put it in a place where it won't run into any sewer, stormwater drain or natural waterway

�� dispose of solid waste by sealing it and placing it for disposal with other solid waste (which is

taken to a waste transfer station).

Bonfire?

It is also the filler used in most plastic lumber - recycled milk jugs + sawdust. Of course those are mainly large operations that need a lot of sawdust.

Sell it to a black liquor manufacturer and make electricity from it or start up your own and power your own mill (selling off the excess).

While the link by Kramat to a forestry document is good the information is dated 1969. Many developments have occurred in the intervening 4 decades. There is a series of video and postings by a frenchman named Jean Paine Who demonstrated the utility of sawdust piles as a source of heating and wood gas production. The most recent post I saw was concerning sucessful use of a 'Paine pile' in siberia

Jean Paine has now died but his concept lives on and is promoted by entghusiastic followers. He demonstrated that a stand alone farmstead can make effective use of waste saw dust and wood compost. Here in northern BC many big saw mills use saw dust for CHP installations to reduce their dependence on outside energy sources. Heat using plants such as paper making and kiln drying of lumber are prime candidates. In urban situations central heat plants that distribute heat to remote buildings are gaining popularity. The need to control the combustion process for minimal emissions is costly so economies of scale makes such distance heating plants viable. I know it has been used in Europe because some of my relatives there are employed in the industry. Now I am seeing it being implemented in some cities in cold weather regions.