Facts On Wood Pellet Plants and Their Capabilaties

The last decade has seen wood pellets emerge as a serious contributor to the heating fuels market, particularly in Europe and the US. Sweden was the first country to really move forward by means of wood pellets in a major way. The government put serious investment into establishing biomass pellet plants around the country taking advantage of the huge volumes of sawdust from one of the major industry in Sweden, timber processing. From Sweden’s case in point, additional European countries followed, along by the US.

The true benefits of pellet plants to bring economic development are still not fully realised, as smaller more localized plants create more economic sense. As wood pellet fuel is now reaching a wide ample appeal, more small scale pellet plants will be set-up to meet local market demand. One of the biggest obstacles to proficient pellet production while maintaining a profit margin is shipping, both in the sense of raw material as well as the finished product. More localized small scale pellet plants can help generate local jobs along with cheap energy.

The reason transportation plays such a crucial role in pellet energy manufacture as it effects the costs of manufacture, likely profits plus also the credibility of pellet fuel as a green fuel. Through fuels such as bio-ethanol in addition to bio-diesel are now used, most transport still relies on standard, along with expensive gasoline. The high charge of this energy means transportation costs can be very high. Therefore having large pellet plants which have to have large quantities of raw matter transported to the factory is very costly. Large pellet plants as biomass pellet fuel is still a relatively small market, then have to search further a field to find customers. To then transport the finished pellet to a customer over a long distance also costs a significant amount of money. If all of this price is passed onto the consumer, it will be difficult to be charge competitive with pellet plants closer to the customer. Finally as haulage still relies on fossil fuels, increased transport means increased carbon emissions. This therefore increases the carbon footprint of the wood pellet manufacture process.

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Pellet plants create diverse grades of pellet energy for unlike consumer markets. One grade is focused more on the residential market, by way of supplementary pellets focused more on industrial wood burning systems. At present the residential market is predominately interested in pellet fuels which can offer them similar levels of convenience that their previous gas or oil based heating system offered them. The lower ash percentage of premium grade pellet energy, on the other hand more expensive, serves the majority of the residential market. Industrial customers are more interested in the higher ash but cheaper energy pellets. Depending on the type of wood matter that is to be processed at pellet plants, this will dictate the appropriate pellet mill for the application. For different materials the pellet mill may require to operate one more speeds. For example for softer material the pellet mill can operate at higher rotation speeds.

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