Wood Pellets

From Cornburning

Pellets are made from sawdust and wood shavings, which are dried, compressed under extremely high pressure and formed into small cylindrical 8 and 6 mm diameter pieces.

Neither glues nor other kind of additives are used while manufacturing pellets. It is made from 100% pure recycled wood waste. Making wood pellets helps to utilize wood waste coming from sawmills, furniture produces and other wood factories.

Renewable fuel resources have least influence to air pollution. Burning fossil fuel (coal or oil) gives off big amounts of carbon dioxide, NO, SO2, HCH. Nowadays one of the most important ecological problems is carbon dioxide, which effects to the Earth temperature. Burning wood fuel also gives off some carbon dioxide, but, as specialists think, it is neutral carbon, witch is a part of natural cycle, it is balanced by the carbon absorbed by the growing trees.

All wood fuel is natural, but pellets are dryer, humidity is less than 10%, while green wood chips has about 45% and seasoned wood - 25% moisture content. The bigger moisture content fuel has, the bigger amount of carbon dioxide gives off. That means, that burning wood pellets gives off less carbon dioxide.

Lower moisture content is an advantage not only for air pollution, but also for our comfort. Pellets are much easier to ignite, there's less tar build up in the chimney and ash deposition.

Wood pellets have bigger thermal value than wood chips or wood logs. It has considerable advantage over other kind of wood fuel in terms of storage and transportation costs.

Wood pellets are comfortable to use. There are lots of Pellet-Fired boilers and stoves produced. Wood pellet stoves and boilers are automated and have automatic ignition, thermostatic controls and can be operated on a time, which saves fuel. It is similar to oil fired heating systems. Wood pellets are clean to use. It is comfortable to use 20 kg bagged pellets in a household to fill pellet stoves.

Wood pellet fuel is clean and safe. There's no risk of explosion unlike oil or gas, no risk of pollution if it accidentally releases. Wood pellets have minimal ash content (less than 1%), wood ash is a good fertilizer and can be returned to nature.

Wood pellets fuel is clean, comfortable to use fuel, which has lots of advantages in comparison with fossilized fuel and other kinds of wood fuel.

Compared to corn, wood pellets have historically been slightly higher in cost per BTU than corn.

College of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, Penn State University

Illustrative Examples of Using the Corn vs. Wood Pellets EnergySelector

Consider the case of shelled corn having the value of $2.50 per 50 pounds and the price of wood pellets is $250 per ton. In this case, the intersection point of these two values on the EnergySelector is in the "Burn Shelled Corn" territory. Just on the basis of heats of combustion, it is cheaper to burn corn than wood pellets for this example.

Consider the case when the value of the shelled corn is $5.00 per 50 pounds and the price of wood pellets is $150 per ton. Now the intersection of these two values is in the "Burn Wood Pellets" territory.

Assumptions

Assumptions used to develop this Corn vs. Wood Pellets EnergySelector are:

Fuel Heat Content Thermal Efficiency

Shelled Corn 6,800 BTU/lb. 75%

Wood Pellets 8,200 BTU/lb. 80%

A 55 Gallon Barrel holds 325 pounds of wood pellets.