Pelleting-what for?

IaLeo

Well-known Member
Son in CA just bought a pellet burning stove. I got to wondering how and who makes wood pellets. I have about 40 ageing soft maples, try to burn the constant brush debris, cut and split wood and burn as much as I can for recreational fires.
How do you process the wood before it is pelletized? Maybe I could haul him a trailer load when we go out on the next trip
Then I just read: pelleting grass! Who buys that?
IaLeo
 
There is companies that make wood pellets out of recycled wood, diseased trees, sawdust from lumber mills and waste from cabinet factories or furniture factories. Usually the wood is ground up, dried and compressed into pellets and sold in 40lb bags or sometimes in bulk loads. Actually foreign demand is driving prices up especially in the east end of the country. There is a lot of companies that make pellet stoves and some models are called multi-fuel stoves which can burn corn or other grains. Some are very simple stoves that you start by hand and others are more expensive that you can push a button to start. Most have thermostats and are basically space heaters. Some are furnaces but they are loosing their popularity.
If you have access to natural gas usually that is the cheapest way to heat next is pellet burners then lp and oil If you can do your own excavating geo thermal is a good way to go.
Grass pellets are frowned on as they create to much ash. Most stoves can't handle grass pellets. There is some companies peddling pellet machines to make your own but be aware you need to grind the wood into sawdust, then dry it same as wet corn then run it through a pellet machine then make sure the pellets are between 1 inch and smaller in length plus be able to cool them off after they come out of the pellet dye. All this takes time and a fair amount of cash. Most of the cheap pellet machines are designed for livestock feed pellets not wood pellets. As you can imagine a lot of dust is created and fire or explosions are common for these plants.
 
I have a pellet stove in basement family room and love it. 4-5 hours of run time on low heat which will about roast you out uses about a large coffee can of pellets. A bag at Menards is about $3.70 and made locally in Spearfish, SD.
Very minimal ash. Has very low moisture content. I figured the can of pellets is about 60-70 cents
 
Sometimes the pellets are also made from tree tops and limbs. The logger takes the logs (tree trunks) for wood leaving the limbs and branches. Depending on how his contract is worded the tops may belong to the logger or the property owner. I worked for a county in Wisconsin that owned 231,000 acres of Commercial Forest when pelleting started on the scene the county forest administrator was trying to figure out what was best, sell the tops to the pellet mills and keep the money, sell the tops to the pellet mills and buy fertilizer or don't sell the tops and chip the tops and blow them down on the land, it became a business decision to maximize revenue.
 

A few years ago while snowmobiling in Quebec we rode through a yard next to a railroad where there were white plastic bags stacked about twenty feet high, row after row, for about three hundred yards. They were wood pellets awaiting shipment south by train.
 

We sell tractor parts! We have the parts you need to repair your tractor - the right parts. Our low prices and years of research make us your best choice when you need parts. Shop Online Today.

Back
Top