How to Make Pellets and Become a Pellet Maker

September 22nd, 2009 by Steve Evans

Pellet making is a subject that’s interesting more people all the time, especially in the area of manufacturing renewable fuel pellets. For instance there are many waste materials from forestry and agriculture which can be used to make biomass and the ever popular wood pellets. Making wood pellets today is what the majority have an interest in, and very sensibly too as these can be used to replace wood in many stoves and boilers. This is a cheaper fuel and very sustainable, and “green”.

So what’s concerned in pellet making, and what materials can be processed into pellets?

Because of the general rising cost of oil and gas, and worries over global warming, wood pellets have seen a quick expansion.

We think that the next few years will see a dramatic rise in commercial production scale pellet production plants, however there’s also a chance for you to produce wood pellets or bio pellets on a tiny scale yourself and make huge fuel cost savings at the same time as helping to reduce global warming. That is why this is all about becoming a pellet maker.

To make pellets for sale read on! You can do that too with larger pelletizers available. However, the wood or biomass used must have a low moisture content, or drying apparatus will be necessary. We cannot cover this aspect in any detail here but some good ebooks are available now with information on this subject.

The wood must be reduced to a small uniform sized dust before it can be squeezed into a pellet. Once a dry uniform dust is produced, the material can then be processed into pellets.

It is simply thru satisfactory heat and pressure the wood is formed into pellets. Other raw materials besides wood may also be employed in pellet making, as previously stated. This includes purpose grown energy crops like miscanthus, switchgrass and hemp. It also includes rural waste materials left over from food production, for instance wheat straw, barely straw and corn stalks. All these raw biomass materials can be processed for making pellets. Making pellets from these biomass materials is usually simpler and has a lower energy usage than manufacturing wood pellets.

Care is needed as biomass pellets will usually make a higher ash content than wood pellets, between the 7-10% range. Hemp however is the exception, with an ash content below three percent.

Another aspect to be tackled is that any biomass materials produce heavy levels of chloride during combustion, which is a high temperature corrosive, and can damage stoves and boilers. Clinker formations can also happen in the burn pot, and slag can collect round the heat exchanger tubes.

Now that we have talked about the raw material lets look at the pellet making process.

The pellet mill is in reality the key piece of equipment needed in pellet making. Once the material has been prepared reasonably, it is feed at controlled rates into the pellet mill. The pellet mill either comprises of a flat die or alternatively a ring die design, however both designs have at their heart a die and 2 or more rollers revolving against the outside of the die.

The velocity of the pellet mill die, die hole angels, die depth and roller height play crucial roles on the standard of pellets that are produced. However, expert manufacturers do produce equipment to do this.

Pellet making is a technically demanding process to attain quality pellets, using an effective and trustworthy process with lowest power usage, but has a great potential to make the pellets makers a good career in a discipline where many are seeking to use “green” renewable biomass energy.

There is a big profit to be made from using cheap biomass, possibly available on your own farm, for pellet making and these fuels will be increasing in need as non-renewable fossil fuel prices rise. This is a great opportunity but you will need more information than we can give you here though, before you can start. To get top information about how to make pellets and become a pellet maker visit:

Make Wood Pellets, Bio Pellets and Power Pellets – Click Here!