Why process wood sawdust into pellets?
Wood pellet as a kind of new green energy has been widely applied in Europe, South American and other countries around the world. As people become more and more concerned about the carbon emission and air pollution, wood pellets are popular for room heating and for commercial use in power station. If you have a pellet stove or pellet fireplace in your family, then pellet fuel is an easy and clean fuel for family use. Of course, you can buy the pellets from the wholesale market or from the truck transmit system. But, if you live in a place where has plenty of raw materials that can be processed by pellet mill, like sawdust, agriculture waste or other waste things like fruit shell, grass, garbage etc. Then why not try to make pellet from those waste things? It is cost saving and easy for use. If you can make those waste things into precious energy, then you save a lot of money.
How to choose pellet mill ?
At first, you have to purchase a set of pellet mill which can meet your demand. Of course, there are plenty of types of pellet mill on the market for sale. There are variety pellet mill in quality and production capacity. In general, the home use pellet mill can meet your demand if you are the first time to make pellets. Also the pellets are only for room heating use. A small pellet mill can be your perfect selection.
Then what is a small pellet mill? A small pellet mill actually means the flat die pellet mill which is common on the market. It has simple structure which mainly contains a flat die and a compression roller. The basic working principle of flat die pellet mill is that the materials being compressed between the roller and die, then pass through the hole of the die, the cylinder shape pellets are formed under the strong friction force. While the flat die pellet mill can only be used for small production ability. For large scale commercial production, ring die pellet mill is more perfect. Due to the high production efficiency and production cost, ring die pellet mill can’t be used for home use. While if you have plenty of money, you can chose small ring die pellet mill also. But here, we take flat die pellet mill as an example.
The steps of sawdust pellets making process:
- 1. Start the biomass pellet machine in which you will make your pellets and wait a few minutes for heating up the ring die. The heat could help the lignin in the wood fiber out of the sawdust, and bonding the sawdust as the pellets.
- 2. Put a large box under the chute of the biomass pellet machine for catching the pellets during pelletizing process. Feed the sawdust by handfuls or small shovelfuls into the hopper of the pellet mill. In a few seconds, pellets will begin to fall out of the chute into the box.
- 3. Allow the pellets to cool in the box before you handle them. When they are cool they are ready for you to burn in a pellet stove or a pellet insert. Store any unused pellets in bags in a dry place.
- 4. Sieve the pellets that did not form properly. Some pieces will fall apart or break during the pressing process. Separate the improperly formed pieces by shaking or sifting them through a screen.
- The Inspection and maintenance
It seems that you have done all the things you have to do after you have pelletized the wood pellet. But there also have some important points you must know, and have to follow to do.
Firstly, you should clean the die and rollers carefully. When you feed the machine with raw materials, there may have some hard impurities got stuck and if you don’t clean them out, it will be very harmful to the working station of the machine. Furthermore, you may not forget the bearings. The bearings will be working in a high temperature and high press, so maintain the bearings is very important.
Here have some advice and you can take based on your own situation. Before the mill begins to work, you can grand the die with the mixture of bran and oil. And the clearance between the template and pinch roller should be 0.1-0.3mm. Then, you should clean the bearing every 2-5 days and fill it up with grease that resist to high temperature. You also have to know that all the maintenance thing must be done in the state of blackout. And the machine should be placed suitable and stable, because it is not good to the mill if you move it constantly.
