I intended to put this up a few weeks ago; we have been featured in Farmers Weekly. Farmers Weekly are the largest farming magazine in the UK, with a circulation in excess of 70,000 readers. They were particularly interested in the potential in turning straw into fuel pellets. For example many farmers use straw for animal bedding, and for certain animals like chickens and pigs their enclosures are heated during the winter months. Using the same resource that is used for animal bedding as the fuel source to heat the animal enclosures and the farmhouse would have huge cost benefits for the farmer. Below is a link to a copy of the article from the magazine featured on the Farmers Weekly website.
The fire burns very well giving off lots of heat and warms up the house very quickly. Wheat straw pellets cause a clinker to form in the boiler, but as more pellets are fed through the clinker is pushed out of the burn pot. The next day before the boiler starts up again we remove the clinker. We have the boiler running on a timer in the house, the boiler starts and turns its self off automatically.
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In the US there is a wood pellet shortage, this occurs almost every year in the US however this years shortage is more severe. As oil prices rise more people have purchased pellet stoves, however at the same time the American housing market has crashed, therefore very few new homes been built. This lack of new houses means a lack of demand for wood, therefore a lack of the by-product sawdust for pellets. Below is a video from The Berkshire Eagle.
Here is an extract from the article on the Berkshire Eagle website:
The current shortage has left consumers scrambling. The sawdust used for the pellets is most commonly procured from sawmills, but a deflated housing market has dramatically impacted the supply. In addition, demands and shipping costs are making pellets increasingly expensive. And because it is a relatively small industry, many producers are wary of producing too many pellets and are not equipped to quickly react to large shifts in either demand or supply.
Pellets, which were being sold for $250 a ton earlier this spring, are currently being sold for more than $300 a ton. The average pellet stove will burn between 3 to 5 tons in an average winter.
The process has been difficult for many local suppliers. “It’s frustrating and challenging for us,” said Bart Raser, owner of Carr Hardware in Pittsfield. “People have relied upon us for years.” Raser said his store has no pellets, having sold more in August than in all of 2007. His current wait list is more than 150 people long. “It’s not looking very good for this year,” he said. “I anticipate the price will continue to rise and there will be limited supply all year.”
This is a clear example of the pellet fuel market relying on only large scale pellet plants that use only one resource (sawdust) to produce their pellets. Supply problems and price rises happen frequently, which mirrors using fossil fuels and foreign oil; it is only the consumer who suffers.
If the pellet market had more small-scale local producers, they would be able to aid market supply, reducing the risk of supply problems and keeping prices stable. Also more resources other than softwood sawdust need to be used, as this story shows sawdust is a limited resource, and as the sawdust supply drops, pellet prices rise just like oil prices.
With the PelHeat Mobile Pelletizer small groups could help to increase market supply and create stable market prices, while at the same time supporting the local economy.
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At PelHeat we mainly talk about biomass pellets as fuel pellets, as this is the designed purpose of our mobile pelletizer. The biomass pellet however is seen in many different markets not just as fuel pellets, below are a few examples.
Fuel Pellets
To provide heating for small properties and large industrial buildings, using pellet stoves and pellet boilers. Coal power stations also use pellets in co-combustion with coal, straw pellets are most common for this purpose. Power stations use pellets as it reduces transportation costs and is safer to transport than straw dust, as dust explosions can occur.
Animal Feed Pellets
The animal feed pellet industry is a very large producer of pellets, with added vitamins and nutrients to feed to horses for example.
Animal Bedding Pellets
Pellets made from straw for animal bedding as they absorb moisture and keep the animals living space clean and warm.
Gardening Pellets
Pellets made from chicken manure to use as a garden fertiliser.
Pond Pellets
Barley straw pellets are used to purify ponds from algae.
Fishing Pellets
Used as fishing bait, there are many different types.
BBQ Pellets
Special wood pellets are produced to use in Pellet BBQ’s. Pellet BBQ’s are becoming very popular as they give the food better flavours, below is a video from one of the major Pellet BBQ’s manufactures.
As you can see there are many different and diverse ways to use pellets and pellets can be made from a wide range of materials.
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We have almost finished the installation of our new Tatano Biomass Pellet boiler. The unit develops a maximum of 25KW’s, and will be used to heat our home. The boiler is situated in an external building, and we have fitted underground pipes, which lead to the house and join into our existing system.
As stated in early articles on the blog, the reason we have chosen this boiler is it gives us flexibility in what type of biomass pellets we can use effectively. The boiler is simple, however very robust and can withstand corrosion that would destroy other pellet boilers and stoves. The simple reason is it uses heavy gauge metal, similar to coal boilers to withstand the corrosion of straw pellets for example.
The boiler has a 140-litre hopper, which will hold roughly 84kgs of pellets. There are options to have larger hoppers that can even store your entire years supply of pellets. Because we intend to carry out research on different types of biomass pellets and they’re burning characteristics, we decided a smaller hopper is more suitable so we can change the pellet batch easily.
The door to the boiler has smaller openings to view the fire, and to put logs into the fire without having to open the large door. The Tatano may require more maintenance than more expensive sophisticated systems, however the maintenance is kept as simple and easy as possible. The horizontal heat exchanger tubes are easy to inspect and clean to get good heat transfer. This unrestricted access to the heat exchanger tubes and burn chamber means we will be able to gather more information on the burning characteristics of different biomass pellets.
The last image is of the burn pot, and as stated in earlier articles on grass pellet stoves this design of the burn pot is crucial to the boilers ability to successfully burn a wide variety of fuels. In the base of the burn pot is the auger, which pushes pellets up through the burn pot, the igniter (the white circle) then lights the pellets. Half way up the burn pot you can see several holes, this is where air is injected to fuel the fire.
The auger will be set at different minute intervals to feed more pellets up to the fire. This will depend on the type of pellet burning, as some pellets burn quicker than others. As the new pellets are pushed through, the ash and other deposits such as clinkers are pushed over the edge of the burn pot. The user at the beginning or end of every day or every few days then collects the ash.
We are very happy with the Tatano boiler, and we look forward to using it to heat our home and continue our research into different types of biomass pellets.
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A German company has developed a Stirling engine retrofit for the KWB pellet boilers. The SPM Stirling engine then terns the KWB pellet boiler into a small scale CHP, providing heat and electricity to the user. This electricity will either be used within the property or sold back to the grid as valuable green electricity.
The example given is a 15KW KWB pellet boiler fitted with a 1KW SPM Stirling motor. SPM state that the unit is affordable with a reasonable payback time.
Units such as these will be a real benefit to local energy production and increasing the efficiency of burning biomass pellets while providing income for the owner by selling their excess energy back to the grid.
To find out more about SPM visit: www.stirlingpowermodule.at
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Below is a video from Auburn University on their biomass gasifier. The biomass gasifier can use many different types of biomass to produce heat and gas. The biomass is burned in a combustion chamber where air is injected at several different layers. The biomass passes through several stages of combustion eventually to create wood gas or singas as it maybe called. This gas can be used to run internal combustion engines and heating systems. The Auburn application uses the gas to run an internal combustion engine, which then powers a generator.
Biomass pellets are commonly used to run gasifiers due to their uniform size and moisture content. The size of the gasifier can be kept to a minimum, as raw material processing is not required. As biomass pellets do not require drying all the heat generated from cooling the gas can go to heating buildings. Therefore a biomass pellet gasifier becomes a combined heat and power unit (CHP). The PelHeat Mobile Pelletizer could be used to create pellets to be used in small-scale biomass gasifiers. The gasifier could then be used to generate heat and electricity.
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