Wood pellets
With the fast-changing development of science and technology, simultaneously, the consistent increasing costs of fossil fuels and increasing environmental consciousness of our society, people prefer to use biomass pellets as fuels or for feeding animals due to the cost-effective and convenient features. Among biomass pellets, wood pellets are pretty common used. They are generally used for burning purposes.
1.For common family, they can use the pellets for heating; the rate of combustion is quite high. Occasionally, wood pellets are used for barbecue or grill.
2.For industries, wood pellets are burned to satisfy the power needed for the boilers. It’s alternative of coal, petroleum and gas. At the same time, the pellets can be the fuel of thermal power.
3.Moreover, wood pellets can be used as animal bedding.
Therefore in this case, an increasing number of people have begun to process some wood residues such as sawdust, shavings, and so on into pellets at home. This comes to the question: how to make wood pellets at home? There are some issues you should pay attention to prior to the process of pelletizing. Look at the aspects as follows.
Choose proper materials
Frequently, there are abundant of household residues such as leaves, grass, paper and so on in your yard, for wood pellets, the most commonly raw material is kinds of woods, such as woodchips, wood shavings, sawdust, etc. So if you want to make wood pellets at home, the first crucial thing is to choose the proper material.
Select proper pellet mill
To choose economy and durability pellet mill is the most crucial factor of making wood pellets at home. In recent years small scale pellet mills are becoming more popular for home owners, here, I’ll recommend GEMCO pellet mill to you, their flat die pellet mill is exactly what you need for wood pellets making at home. Browse their websites will better tell you how to select pellet mill.
After selecting proper raw material and pellet mill, you can initiate the process of pelletizing. And the procedures are as follows
Reduction
In most cases, the size of raw material is not likely the perfect for pelletizing due to the limited die diameter which restricts the length of raw material; hence you should consider the size of raw material before proceeding to other stages which is a very important procedure during pellet production. Otherwise, if the size of raw material is too small or too large, it can affect the quality of pellets severely, so generally speaking, the most suitable length of raw material is about 2-3mm.
Drying
Occasionally, the moisture content of raw material is too high to pelletize, thus you should dry the raw material, you can just leave your raw material in the sun to dry naturally which can lower your investment. Make sure the moisture content is approximately 10-20%, or else if it is too low, it’s hard to be pelletized into pellets, and if too high, the pellets produced will not be burned totally and can release more ash, this may reduce the combustion rate and do harmful to the environment.
Pelletizing
This is the most significant procedure, and above we have discussed selecting flat die pellet mill to process wood pellets at home. It includes a die and a roller. When pelletizing, you should continuously put raw material into the pellet mill to guarantee the pellet mill working uninterrupted, the die and the roller will be interact each other, thus press the raw material into the holes of the die to form the pellets. The die diameter can be adjusted according to the end use of the pellets. Pay attention not to put your finger or some other sundries into the chamber of pellet mill.
Cooling
When the finished pellets leave the pellet mill, they are hot and moist, consequently, you should spread them out and allow them to cool and dry naturally. In addition, in order to ensure the hardness of pellets, cooling is necessary.
Sieving
After pelletizing, not all the wood pellets are suitable for use, some fines that didn’t form properly or be broken should be separated. This to a great extend can increase the use ratio.
Storing
When wood pellets can’t be used up at a time, put the rest of the pellets in some plastic bags and seal them, store the bags in a dry place to prevent from moist and mould.
As stated, to make wood pellets at home is commendable; it can save the cost of buying fuels. If you are considering making pellets yourself the above will help teach you how to make wood pellets.
