The Early History of Thermex Paper-Cube Fuel

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PHOTO: ALAN JON FORTNEY
Laslocky displays his paper-cube fuel.

Anyone who’s ever driven through the countryside and watched a giant combine efficiently mowing its way across a field of grain has likely marveled at today’s technology. Well, as you may know, other — often less visible — machines are needed to turn field crops into pelletized or cubed feed for livestock.
Similar to the combine, these motorized monsters are very expensive and they, too, spend the bulk of their working lives housed idle in cavernous sheds, waiting to lumber into action when the crop matures. In fact, most feedmaking equipment sees use only from April to September, and — even if the harvest is exceptionally good — the total operating time of such machines may amount to no more than 800 hours a year.

“This equipment is simply too expensive to sit idle for the better part of the year,” notes Russell Laslocky, owner of the 250-acre Windrow Farm near Shoreham, Ver. So, when Laslocky read about a local utility’s plan to fuel one of its generators with wood chips, he began wondering whether his alfalfa-compacting equipment might be used during the off season to produce compressed biomass fuel for wood-stoves and furnaces. Before long the machines — a gargantuan California Century pellet mill and a huge John Deere 390 alfalfa cuber — had been adapted to turn out combustible pellets and cubes from sawdust and waste paper.

Laslocky buys sawdust from local suppliers for about $20 a ton and he’s able to obtain castoff paper from offices, newspapers and other sources free for the hauling (the cost of transporting the paper does average $20 to $25 a ton, though). Once the Vermonter has pelletized or cubed the waste materials, he sells them through a dealer network — in 40-pound bags or by bulk — for $60 to $100 a ton, under the trade name “Thermex.”

Making Sawdust for Fuel 

  • Published on Jan 1, 1982
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