How Are Wood Pellets Made And What Equipment Is Used?

24 May

How Are Wood Pellets Made And What Equipment Is Used?

Posted by: Christopher Scott / Category: Biofuel

Well firstly, what are wood pellets? There are a relatively new form of green and clean energy source which is primarily used for heating homes and businesses, though they can also be used for other applications such as animal and particularly horse bedding.

There are both softwood and hardwood wood pellets sold on the market. The sources of this wood could be sawdust from timber processing, or perhaps wood collected from woodland management, or from events such as the pine beetle which created a lot of wood waste.

So once the wood residue has been chosen, it must then be prepared before it can eventually be compressed into wood pellets. Firstly the wood must be free from any bits of stone or metal as these could cause serious damage to the wood pellet production equipment.

One of the first steps in the pellet production process is to reduce the wood into small particles of a consistent size, usually 5mm in diameter. This is achieved with the use of a hammer mill or a shredder. A cyclone then separates the particles from the air stream.

Drying the wood is most cases is required. For example most wood resources from trees have a moisture content around 50%, where a moisture content of between 10-15% is required for the pellet mill. Therefore a rotary dryer is used in large scale production.

Once the wood particles have been dried and reduced in size they are then ready to be compressed into a wood pellet. To aid the process, the sawdust first enters a conditioner, which heats the sawdust with dry steam. The warm wood particles are then sent to the pellet mill where under high heat and pressure, the particles are compressed into wood pellets. The wood pellets leave the pellet mill very hot, and must cool before storage and use.

Want to find out more about Wood Pellets, then visit Christopher Scott’s site on how to choose the best Wood Pellets For Sale for your needs.

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