Making your own wood pellets

First I have seen of this. Anyone try making their own?

Make Your Own Pellets

Michigan based guy.

Interesting. That place isn't too far away. Now if I only had an unlimited supply of sawdust. :hmm3grin2orange:

wood chips?

I've wondered how wood chips from tree crews would burn if shoveled into an OWB. Anyone tried this or heard of it? Of course the logistics of getting the stuff dry and keeping it that way may be problematic. Just curious. (maybe i spend too much time on here and not enough time burnin' the 2 cycle??)

The guy talks like he's from the UP ehh!

There is or are some saw dust burners available, actually sprays the saw dust in.( saw dust like flour when sprayed can be very explosive) Chips are harder to control as like burning leaves too much smothers the fire leaving a smoldering mass. So some form of agitation or or combustion air injection into the biomass is required to get a decent burn. An auger feed system like the pellet burners could possible work.

interesting video i watched on heating with wood chips

Wood chip Heating system - YouTube

quite a machine

tex said:

The guy talks like he's from the UP ehh!

Click to expand...

<yoopervoice> eh, whatu talking about eh? He don't sound no differn't den da guys down at da B&B or over at da Downtowner </yoopervoice>

Listening to him makes me homesick...

Wonder how different his setup is from a California Pellet Mill?

I messed around with pellet agglomeration probably about 8-9 years ago, just not for heating. We were binding hammermilled 40 mesh pass at 10% MC or so with HDPE, and worked well (frictional heating blows off the moisture as steam). If it was too wet, would slow throughput significantly (like 40% significant).

He is selling a "pellet binder" which is probably some sort of a low molecular weight wax or oil powder (he calls it "corn oil" on his site, but I don't know if that is diversionary) to help hold the works together. I bet a montan wax or paraffin would work well too (I think they use some paraffin in fire logs). You could even get fancy and put some seeds in the pellets for a "crackling" effect (another fire log trick)

I guess it would be interesting to run the numbers on throughput, cost of your time, capital outlay, and fuel consumption & equipment maintenance. Some people do not adequately "value" their time, but if you have time to burn, may be a good way to go.

Look up Bio-burner on youtube or elsewhere, they make a burner that can take in just about anything. I was thiking this was more in line with the DIY"er wanting to make their own pellets.

Making your own wood pellets is not difficult but can take a little experimenting and a effort to get it right.

I have tried a few different things to compress sawdust from my mill for the Eco Green/Recycle folks around here. (no luck)
Everything seems to fall apart,it seems there needs to be some kind of a bonding agent to holds it all together.
Soaking in water and putting 35 tons from my splitter one would think would compress it enough.
Mother Earth news has an article with a coffee can with a hole in the bottom chimney in the center that works well (once you get it lit) about a 4-5 hour burn.
I was impressed with this one.
It anyone buys the book please let us know if it's worth the $. (the price seems a little steep)
Mark

I would think if a person could diversify a bit and be flexible, you could have a decently successful business model. I have been thinking about firewood as a whole, a PTO pellet machine and a saw mill. For wood cutting a dump truck and a tractor are highly handy items. The tractor could also be used for the PTO driven pellet mill, and the dump truck to carry wood shavings/dust from cabinetry shops to the "yard" for pellet production. Couple those with the desire for custom lumber (and associated sale prices) and factor the dust output into the pellets as well and you could have a fairly efficient business model with multiple venues for cash and very little waste.... Hmmm.....:msp_confused:

I am very close to taking the dive on a pellet mill, for my self ( see how that goes first) then if there is an excess of acceptable product maybe sell it . This would be bulk sales as I am not about to get into packaging. I would prefer to do the brick thing but that is quite a bit more expense up front for something that could possible produce an excess to my needs ( wants?) Getting the raw material down to size has been the road block, but I have that solved now. 90% of the mills are chicom made, There are a few state side made units, but as one might expect quite pricy. This not an inexpensive experiment, more like several thousand dollars. Lowest I have been able to get to is around 3g's for a mill 1/3of that is freight. Size wise it would considered a personal type. I have electrical amperage limitations to contend with, which puts a limit on mill size at present. With fuel going through the roof, either type, that does not look good. Although I do have a complete 4.6l drive train ( gas) at my disposal. That presents some interesting possibilities as far as a brick system is concerned as external heat is needed in that process due to the bulk of the brick vs pellets, all of this is with out using any additional binder agents which raise the production cost factor

As a full time tree guy, I've had a look at a lot of different ways of using trees, chip, sawdust and other waste products. I've been involved with some of the 'transition town' movements also, and initiatives for reducing waste and increasing efficiency. The short end of the stick for developed countries is that we are cursed by having too many blessings, so this sort of stuff doesn't work for us in most cases.

I've had a go at a few types of the pellets. Both the smaller round/square pellets, and the larger 'hole in the middle' type bricks for rocket stoves. This sort of technology is a godsend for developing nations who have no fossil fuels, no trees, endless amounts of garbage, and a labor cost of a bowl of rice a day. It solves so many problems simultaneously. It gets rid of the waste, while providing cheap cooking fuel and most people can make it at home with basic wooden presses. Smoke/CO2 etc has been a big health hazzard for people cooking at home with twigs, but the rocket stove and fuels have gone a long way to improving people's lives. People can put time into geting the right mix of waste materials and binders to make it work. For developed nations, we have an excess of cheap fuels like propane at the turn of a knob, electricity, efficient waste collection and a high cost of labour. Do you want to spend an hour or two to cook some pasta, when you could get the same result for about 10c worth of energy in?

Pellets for heating have been very hit and miss, but mostly miss. There are a lot of machines available to buy that produce them, some can produce commercial quantities and are reasonably cheap to get into. You do need the right ingredients, and the right combination of a slasher/crusher/binder/crusher depending on what your ingredients are. Some of the commercial machines combine this process in a single machine. There are a lot of websites out there with successful formulas if you are interested. It needs experimentation, but no matter how good it gets it still isn't very good. By the time you add in labour and transport it also isn't very cheap. Sells well to environmentalists though. We have a couple bags for sale at gas stations next to the firewood for people who want that warm fuzzy feeling in aus. The bags sit there a long time. You can make a half decent product with the right input - but that means mostly good quality dry wood. With the more basic stuff like waste paper products, sawdust etc, the best you can say is that it's better than throwing it away. But not by much.

We had a big market for woodchip as a heating/fuel source in australia a few years back. We were exporting a lot to Japan and some other countries. There was a lot of investment at the time, and experimentation to use it as a clean source for generating heat and electricity at commercial level. It all came to nought, everyone who invested lost money, and the market is gone. There's something similar going on in the UK recently with commercial wood chip boilers for hotels and similar which provide heating, hot water and some electricity, and are self feeding from a large hopper. Most of what I've read has been a failure though, so it seems to be headed the same way.

The trouble is that it's a difficult product to regulate/deal with. You can go 2 ways as a supplier of chip; buy whole logs, or receive chip. Buying whole logs gives you good quality control, but it's expensive. Plus, you then have to chip them which adds further to the cost. You then have to dry them, which is complicated and involves things like storage, revolving air floors (more cost) or other quick drying methods (more cost). Why not just supply it as wood? Chipping a log doesnt make it magically have more BTU's. If you are receiving chip for free, it's impossible to control what you are receiving. Chip is no different than firewood, things you wouldn't want to burn as wood, won't burn any better as chip. But guys are going to bring you every conceivable bit of crap they can. Then you still need to dry, store and deliver. The end product is low quality, and inconsistent in burn rate, BTUs, moisture and chip size.... so it doesn't do too well in the boilers. It doesn't help that the chip suppliers, much like unscrupulous firewood sellers, also supply chip at a higher moisture content, and material of lower BTU than specified, but still charge the same per cubic yard. End users get sick of it quick, and abandon their new troublesome gadget to go back to something simple and easy. The buyers are rich people/greenies mostly, and they don't have time to fuss with stuff.

Shaun

I agree with everything you have stated, you did leave out one particular area though. That being any type of biomass unit for heat is going to need on going maintenance in some cases daily ect. and they are a bit fiddly. I was talking with the general manager of a local mill yesterday. When they built their plant, he researched, using the plant waste as a heat/power source. Not a viable option in his opinion at the time (2008). 4 years later has not made much difference. Most of his reasons you stated. to go a bit further, raw material would be all clean softwood kiln dried, it would need size reduction for use, additional 2 personnel whose primary job would be the maintaining all system requirments , 24/7, adds up cost wise in a hurry v/s the infrared they went with ( set and forget).
Just for grins using $6500 as a start cost, burning 4t of pellets /year at 200per it would be about 8 years to re-coup investment. not counting the stove which would add a couple more. Now I am all ready using cord wood for most of my heat so the offset there is maybe $30 a month. Maybe a bit more if I were to add a water preheat loop of some type for the gas hotwater heater. Cord wood costs at present are less than $10/month, I do not purchase cords, all scrounge, capitol equipment for cord wood is at zero. Cord wood has been my primary heat source for 12 years. at present in my area a cord of good hardwood ranges from $190- $250 split and delivered, but most often you are going to have to sit on it for 2 years before it is usable in the current appliances. I have about 30 cords in various stages. Not bad for a guy in the burbs, but most do not have that capability, and this is where the biomass products fit in. I am pretty sure we are going to see expontential increases in gas and electric costs over the next few years, much worse than we have been blessed with since the late 70's which around here is over 100%. The Financial and Government hotshots have created a hurricane of depression, currently we are sitting just inside the edge of the eye.

To burn chips in a OWB you just need to place a few pieces of regular wood in the middle, this will help re-light the chips when the damper opens. I normally do this in fall and early spring because it takes longer to get back to set point unless you have a fan on damper. Same thing applies to burning pellets & corn.

Thanks for your first post. What brought you here?

imagineero said:

Thanks for your first post. What brought you here?

Click to expand...

have ben a member for a couple of year's, but have not had time to reply.