After the oil has been extracted from the crop, there is a solid waste remaining that is left over, which is often referred to as a ‘cake’. You could produce a 100% ‘cake’ pellet, but this pellet would not burn very well, would be very corrosive and because ‘cake’ can be used as an animal feed it would be very expensive.
However mixing ‘cake’ with other biomass raw materials like wood, straws, miscanthus and waste wood etc can be very beneficial. As stated in other articles for pellet production to be successful a sufficient amount of binder is required, to lubricate the process and bind the material together to produce a pellet. Now some materials have sufficient binder of their own, but some material have lost their natural binder like waste timber, and other materials just lack binder altogether.
Adding a percentage of ‘cake’ to the raw material, say 10-20% can dramatically affect that materials performance in the pellet mill:
1. The ‘cake’ can take a material like waste timber, which has lost most of its own natural binder, and dramatically increase pellet productivity.
2. A percentage of ‘cake’ can help to lubricate the pelletizing process and improve the productivities of all biomass materials.
3. A percentage of ‘cake’ can improve the quality of the biomass pellets. Producing a longer and firmer pellet.
Below is a video I took of a small-scale oil press. The worm like material exiting the machine and entering bucket is the ‘cake’.
Thank you for your interest
