builders bags of cheap firewood any ideas ?

[renewablejohn]

deviation from the topic but what does building the pellet plant involve construction and cost wise?

 

what % mc does the feedstock have to be.

 

In reality to do it commercially you would need a plant with a minimum output of 1 to 10 tonnes per hour probably something like this.

 

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6fbdBKchRk]YouTube - Introduction of HVGE Mobile Pellet Mill[/ame]

 

As for cost how long is a piece of string. Their is a lot of s/hand milling equipment around going for scrap prices so if your handy with a welder probably about 20k which would include 5k for an industrial direct drive pellet mill with that sort of output. Buying a new off the shelf ready built skid unit for that output would be 50k to 70k. Obviously the bigger the output the more it will cost.

 

As regards moisture content your really looking between 8% and 12%.

[County4x4]

I reckon it would get pretty tireseome feeding that machine one handful at a time pretty quickly!

 

Andy

[firewood]

I reckon it would get pretty tireseome feeding that machine one handful at a time pretty quickly!

 

Andy

 

and shaking the pellets off the end chute by hand

 

I presume the guy in the clip is making animal feedstuff.

 

and whereas hay and straw may dry quickly to a suitable %mc woodchip and sawmill waste takes longer and therefore may need to be "cooked" prior to processing. This is the killer and must gobble up a fair bit of the £160 per ton.

 

 

from what i can see pellets may have fantastic possibilities for power stations and large scale uses but for smaller domestic purposes i cannot see them beating wood or coal or peat if the retail price is fairly close to coal and the househoulder needs to spend several thousand pounds installing a suitable burner and feed system.

 

I do not think that will change until the pellet cost is akin to that of ordinary logs but to achieve that you would need a pellitiser or briquette maker that could take green chip or timber waste and process it without the need for drying the feedstock. With a machine that could do that for sub £20k (or the price of a mid range firewood processor ) then competition would open up the market, bring a lot more demand and supply, and bring end prices down toward firewood levels.

[renewablejohn]

Wood pellets stoves are widespread throughout Europe and America and are far more controllable than log stoves being more akin to replacing a gas boiler. As for manufacture we dry all our timber in polytunnels to a MC which allows use to pelletise without further drying. Our next phase will be drying arb arising from the waste heat from a wood gasification plant to form torrefied wood which will then be pelletized to produce a product with the heat equivalent of coal and be waterproof like coal.

[firewood]

Wood pellets stoves are widespread throughout Europe and America and are far more controllable than log stoves being more akin to replacing a gas boiler. As for manufacture we dry all our timber in polytunnels to a MC which allows use to pelletise without further drying. Our next phase will be drying arb arising from the waste heat from a wood gasification plant to form torrefied wood which will then be pelletized to produce a product with the heat equivalent of coal and be waterproof like coal.

 

I have friends in Denmark who burn pellets. they tell me that pellets cost not too much more than split logs over there. If that is the case, I'm not surprised that pellet stoves are more popular in the rest of europe. as to the usa i couldn't comment.

 

Can the torrefied pellets / briquettes be burnt just like coal i.e. on an open fire with the same efficiency as coal? or do they need a specialised burner?

 

For those of you like me who had never heard of torrefication before here is an explanatory link:

Pellets from Torrefied Wood.pdf