Explore Topics

Using wood as a energy for heating solutions is nothing new, though using wood in pellet form for heating solutions has only really existed on commercial scale since the beginning of the 21st century. Basic log stoves along with boilers have always been a division of dwelling and firm heating solutions. On the other hand they have never really gained mass market appeal in the modern world. The obvious reasons for this is that they are very labour intensive, they are not very energy proficient, the energy is not always locally accessible plus log haulage over longer distances is not economically viable or sustainable. Therefore the only people who have used log heating solutions are those either have access to their own or a local reserve of seasoned timber. The other issues are the logs generally sold are not seasoned down to the 30% required to achieve a satisfactory burn with limited smoke. Though many of the biomass log dealers sell the energy at prices which would not indicate that it contained between 40-50% moisture. The other major disadvantage is the volume of space that is required to store the timber. This therefore means the biomass log heating market will never grow into a serious market contender in the 21st century. Though pellets do offer a practical heating solution which can compete by way of other heating units.

Learn more about Wood Pellet

The principle of biomass pellet energy has actually existed since the 1970′s. Animal feed mill processors were experimenting by using biomass in the feed mills. Though the machinery is not ideal to create biomass pellets, they did manufacture the first wood pellet energy, as well as a few wood pellet fuel manufactures in addition to pellet stove manufactures did enter the market. On the other hand at the time there was no real market share for the biomass pellet. Biomass pellets are more expensive than biomass logs, and the payback were not well known. On the other hand they had much lower maintenance than burning logs, they still required more maintenance than oil or gas heating solutions. At that time the fee of oil and gas was cheap, there we no concern over fuel resource along with no one was aware of climate change and carbon emissions. The biomass pellet market never really go going until the beginning of the 21st century, when the prices of oil as well as gas began to rise and concern over climate change was been started to be taken seriously. Sweden was well ahead of the rest of the world by biomass pellet fuels, plus had proved the principle of the fuel plus pellet stoves in addition to pellet boilers.

Read more about Wood Pellet Heating

The characteristics of wood pellet energy is a uniform shape along with size. These qualities mean biomass pellets are ideal for automatic feeding systems by means of auger units. Biomass pellet stoves plus boiler have an integrate hopper which can hold at least a days worth of fuel. The burner is controller by computer which monitors the fire in addition to feeds in the required amount of pellets to maintain the desired temperature. As most pellet burners also have hot rod igniters they can ignite the pellets as well, so the pellet stove or boiler can turn its self on, on demand plus turn its self off with cutting off air flow to the fire. Wood pellets have a much higher density than wood logs as well as also a much lower moisture content below 10%. This technique the pellets generate less ash along with less smoke, requiring less maintenance. Premium biomass pellets make only 0.5% ash.

More information on Wood Pellet Production