How to Make Wood Pellets-The Ultimate Beginner's Guide
Are you curious about how to make wood pellets? Keep reading to learn everything you need to know.
Wood pellets are a fast, easy way to get the warmth and comfort of a wood-burning stove without having to deal with all the mess. Making your own pellets is an environmentally friendly option that provides a renewable, biodegradable source of fuel for your fireplace, fuel stove, or another heating element.
You’ll save money on your heating bills and help the planet all at the same time! Best yet, the process is easy and hardly time-consuming at all.
Here’s what you need to know.
Table of Content
What Are Wood Pellets?
Wood pellets are biomass products made out of renewable substances, generally cycled wood waste.
They can be used in freestanding stoves, boilers, furnaces, fireplace inserts, and more. They’re used in homes along within large-scale environments like prisons, schools, and more.
Wood pellets are the most common type of pellet fuel and are made from compacted sawdust and related industrial waste from tasks like lumber milling, furniture making, construction, and other sources.
Wood pellets are materials that can be used for a variety of tasks. You can use them to make fuel, create bedding for animals, or act as tinder for a fire.
Most pellets are made in bulk by commercial pellet mills, but as a homeowner (or a homeowner looking to start your own wood pellet small business!) You can quickly learn how to turn organic matter into wood pellets yourself, so you don’t have to rely on your local building supply store, fireplace dealer, or another shop to provide you with the pellets you need.
What Are the Ingredients in Wood Pellets?
Wood pellets can be made from a variety of materials.
The most common organic materials are those made from a variety of biomass or organic sources such as wood chips, sawdust, bark, brush, and other things that are produced as byproducts. They might be byproducts of a variety of practices, such as lumber milling and the making of wood products.
Softwood that is not great for construction purposes (an example would be a poplar tree) can be grown specifically for pellet manufacturing, but it’s more common for manufacturers to use waste wood to make pellets.
In some cases, things like straw and corn stalks are also used to make wood pellets in combination with these other materials.
How Much Sawdust Makes a Ton of Pellets?
If you’re planning on creating enough wood pellets for home use, you might be wondering how much you actually need.
The exact measurements can vary depending on multiple factors. However, a good estimate is that for 7 m³ of bulk sawdust with the moisture content around 50-55%, you can produce a ton of pellets with a standard pellet mill.
Of course, you may not achieve maximum yields on your first try. As you gain more practice in working with your pellet mill, you’ll figure out the best measurements, ratios, and techniques to help you be successful in making your own wood pellets each and every time!
Wood Pellets vs Charcoal, Which is Better?
If you’re shopping for a pellet grill or trying to decide whether to use charcoal or wood pellets to fuel your home, you might be wondering whether wood pellets or charcoal is best.
Here is what you need to know.
Intended Use
Wood pellets are often used as a fuel source for homes, but they can also be used for cooking. Charcoal pellets are rarely used as a source of heat.
Most people agree that while wood pellets are ideal for heating, charcoal is the superior source of fuel for cooking, lending your food a more desirable flavor.
Cost
If you can make your own wood pellets, then this is the most cost-effective option. Even if you have to buy wood pellets, you’ll likely find that it’s cheaper than charcoal, particularly charcoal briquettes.
Ease of Use
Wood pellets tend to be easier to ignite than charcoal, although that’s certainly not always the case. Charcoal produces a bit more smoke, meaning it can be more difficult to use if you’re new to working with it.
Temperature Range and Control
When you work with charcoal, you’ll find that it gets much hotter much more quickly. Lump charcoal burns hotter than briquettes, and with charcoal, you can often achieve temperatures of over 800 degrees Fahrenheit!
That said, it can be more difficult to control the temperature when you are working with charcoal. Wood pellets offer a bit more precision and make it easier for you to fine-tune your temperature.
Run Time
Wood pellets can run long and slow, as can charcoal. However, the key with charcoal is controlling your temperature – since charcoal can get much hotter, it’s also easier to burn through all of your charcoal in as little as a few hours.
How to Make Wood Pellets?
To make wood pellets at home, you will need a wood pellet mill. There are a few options to choose from. You can buy a ring die pellet mill or a flat die pellet mill. The latter is by far the most preferred type for home use – it is a smaller-scale machine that is ideal for making smaller quantities of wood pellets.
It tends to be small in volume and lightweight. Often, it will have wheels that allow you to drag it wherever it needs to go. They also cost much less than ring die pellet mills, so these are the type you should look for if you want to make your own wood pellets at home.
What to Look for in a Pellet Mill Flat Die Machine
There are a few things you will need to look for when shopping for a pellet mill.
First, what kind of drive motor do you have access to? A wood pellet maker can have several different drive types, including an electric motor, gasoline, PTO, and diesel engine-driven operation.
Electric motors tend to be the most popular since electricity is available everywhere. Plus, you won’t have to add oil. However, if you’re trying to make wood pellets beside your stacks of raw materials or in remote locations on your property, connecting to your electric supply might not be the most convenient.
Therefore, you may want to choose a diesel option. These are a bit more convenient – unless you have a tractor or other type of agricultural machinery. If you have access to this sort of machinery, then a PTO pellet mill can be the most economical choice since you already have the machinery you need.
The average wood pellet machine price for a flat die is around $1000 to $2000, depending on the specifications of your machine. While that might seem like a lot, it’s worth the cost if you find yourself making lots of wood pellets on a regular basis.
What Equipment Do You Need In Addition to a Pellet Mill?
While the pellet mill is the most important piece of machinery you need to make your own wood pellets, you also need a few other materials and tools too.
Raw Materials
The first is your raw materials. Obviously, you aren’t going to be able to make your own wood pellets if you don’t have the wood!
You can use any kind of wood matter, including wood chips, sawdust, or logs. For a small batch of pellets, you’ll need eight to ten logs or four buckets of sawdust.
Your raw materials should be no larger than the holes on your flat die machine, but you can always use a wood chipper to get them down to size.
Generally, this is between three and five millimeters, but it can vary depending on the type and size of the machine you have. A wood chipper can help you get the raw materials to the right size for making pellets – more on this below.
What is a chipper? It is simply a machine that processes raw material, like large logs and branches, into smaller, workable chips. This can help get your raw materials down to the right size.
There are several types of wood chippers you can use in wood pellet manufacturing, including drum chippers, disk chippers, and more. However, drum chippers tend to be best for the wood pelletizing process, especially if you are working with bigger wood logs.
Rotary Dryers vs. Flash Dryers
You will also need to make sure the moisture content of these raw materials is appropriate. Typically, you will want a moisture content that is between 10 and 18%.
If the moisture content isn’t up to snuff, you will need to use either rotary drum dryers or flash dryers to remove the water. For smaller-sized raw materials, a flash dryer is appropriate. For larger pieces, a rotary dryer is ideal.
The rotary dryer working principle is this – the materials go into one side of the dryer and come out the other side, as you can see in the rotary dryer diagram below. The biomass materials with higher water content are fed into the rotary cylinder; then, the hot air passes through the dryer to raise the inner temperature. The biomass materials absorb heat, drying the materials and reducing the moisture.
This biomass dryer is perfect for any level of wood pellet manufacturing, especially if you are interested in operating a commercial wood pellet plant.
Below, you can find a basic rotary vacuum dryer/rotary dryer design to give you an idea of how it works. Although the details can vary depending on the specific rotary dryer manufacturer, the basic principles are the same:
For most people, though, the amount of raw materials that need to be turned into wood pellets isn’t substantial enough to warrant the purchase of a rotary dryer or a flash dryer. Therefore, you will want to just put the material out in the open air. Let the wind take away and draw out the moisture naturally – this will take longer than using a rotary dryer or a flash dryer but can save you a lot of money.
Wood Hammer Mill Machine
Finally, before you process the wood pellets in your pellet machine, you will need to get them down to size. Mother Nature doesn’t create raw materials in the perfect size for creating wood pellets – that work will be left up to you! That’s where the wood hammer mill principle comes in.
There are both large and small hammer mills available. For home use, a small mill is aplenty. It will allow you to reduce raw materials of diameters of around 30 millimeters into finer pieces with diameters ranging from two to five millimeters – this, you’ll recognize quickly, is the size mentioned above that’s ideal for working with the wood pellet machines.
You can find wood hammer mills in all shapes, sizes, and types. Most can be found with either electric or diesel motors.
How to Make Wood Pellets at Home: Quick Guide
Once you’ve gathered all the materials and equipment you need, making wood pellets is quick and easy.
You’ll make your wood pellets from biomass materials through a simple sequence of processes.
Gather and Chip Your Wood
First, gather your materials. Again you can use logs, sawdust, or any other wood matter for your pellets. It just needs to be the appropriate size.
What is a chipper?
A chipper is simply a machine that can be used to reduce the wood into smaller wood chips. Wood chippers are often portable, so you can wheel them around to wherever you need to work.
To chip your wood, you will need to turn on the wood chipper by activating the ignition switch. Carefully feed the logs, branches, or other materials into the mouth (be sure to read the instructions for your specific type of wood chipper, as these can vary). Place a bin at the end of the cipher to catch the chips as you work.
One note – if you are using sawdust as your raw material, you won’t need to use your wood chipper. Bonus! It saves a step.
Use of Hammer Mill
Crush the materials into a smaller size by using a wood hammer mill. The hammer mill will chop the small pieces into even smaller particles that can be used to make pellets. They should be around 5 mm. All you need to do is turn the hammer mill on and slowly dump the wood chips into the mouth of the unit.
Again, you’ll want to put some sort of container beneath the mill to catch the small particles as they are created.
If you don’t have a hammer mill, you can rent one from a local sawmill or lumberyard. Again, you can skip this step if you are working with sawdust – it has already been milled and refined into small enough pieces for you to work with.
After you’ve used the hammer mill to get your wood down into a more usable size, you will need to dry it.
You can use a sawdust dryer if your sawdust is extremely wet, but in most cases, this is not necessary. Go ahead and skip to the next step.
For other types of material, you can use either the rotary dryer or flash dryer machine to get them dry.
If you would rather not buy a specialized drying machine, you can always just leave the wood in the sun for 24 hours. Test the moisture level by using a moisture meter. It should be around 10 to 20% before you proceed to the final step in making wood pellets.
The Pellet Mill – How it Works
Understanding the pellet mill and how it works is essential to being successful in your wood pellet creation efforts. As mentioned above, the biomass pellet-making machine known as the pellet mill is an essential component when it comes to wood pellet manufacturing at home or on a commercial scale.
Before you use your pellet mill, make sure you’ve removed any contaminants like stones or bits of metal. Simply run the raw materials through a sieve to catch them. This will prevent you from creating clogs in your machine.
Pour the sawdust into a bowl or a commercial mixture – mixing the sawdust up will ensure that all pieces are uniform in moisture, density, and size. Turn the machine on and wait for the die in the mill to heat up. Most machines operate at around 170 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit.
Feed the sawdust into the pellet mill slowly. This can prevent clogs. As the machine heats up, you can gradually start adding larger amounts of sawdust.
Collecting and Storing Your Wood Pellets
That’s all you need to do! Have some sort of collection bin in place to collect the pellets as they are discharged from the wood pellet mill. You can store them to use in your furnace, cooking range, or pellet stove later on.
As the pellets come out of the pellet mill, you will want to let them cool. When they first are discharged, they will be hot and moist. Therefore, you should let them dry for at least 24 hours so that they don’t get flattened in storage.
Store your pellets in resealable bags and keep them in a dry area until you are ready to use them.
How to Start a Wood Pellet Business?
If you’re thinking of starting a wood pellet business, know first that there are a few core elements you’ll need to be successful.
The first is experience. It’s recommended that you start making wood pellets for your own personal use for at least a year or so before you dive into the commercial wood pellet business. Otherwise, you may find that you’re overwhelmed by unexpected pitfalls – it can be trickier to make wood pellets than you might think!
The next challenge you might overcome is in sourcing your raw materials. To have a successful wood pellet business, you need a stable supply of biomass. If you’re a farmer, this should be relatively easy – you can use things like rice husks, straw, there are, grass, cotton or maize, and of course, wood!
You’ll also have a relatively easy go of it if you operate any kind of business working with wood, like a lumber mill, logging company, furniture factory, or wood processing plant. Of course, you can always buy biomass materials from plants and factories like those mentioned above, but this is going to add an additional cost to your budgeting.
You’ll need to have a workshop that’s large enough to hold your wood pellet manufacturing equipment along with enough raw materials for a minimum of 15 days of production time. It needs to have protection from fire, wind, thunder, and rain. Check with local regulations regarding building codes for this type of business, too.
In addition to all the equipment mentioned above that you need for home wood pellet production, you need a few other types of gear if you plan on producing wood pellets at the commercial scale, too.
For example, you will need some conveying equipment. A scraper conveyor can be used to transmit the wood pellets you produce, serving as the connection point between various pieces of processing equipment, so you don’t have to manually move materials yourself.
For a commercial pellet mill, you may want to combine several types of pellet machines to double your production capacity – ring die pellet machines are, again, the most efficient, but you may want to consider having more than one to up your production capabilities.
Another piece of machinery you might want to have is a pellet cooler. As we mentioned earlier, wood pellets are hot when they exit the machine. You can wait 24 hours for them to cool before packaging, but this can be time-consuming. A counterflow pellet cooler will cool the pellets to room temperature in a matter of minutes while also reducing their moisture content and increasing the hardness.
Finally, you’ll need to consider how you will package, store, and transport the pellets to customers. A pellet packaging machine can take care of this in an automated fashion – just make sure you choose waterproof bags.
If you plan on selling wood pellets in bulk, it’s a good idea to invest in silo storage. A steel silo will make it easy for you to protect the wood pellets from the elements before you need to transport them to your customers.
Consider all the costs of these pieces of equipment and facilities combined. It can take quite a bit of capital to start up a wood pellet business, but the larger the production capacity you have, the lower your unit cost can be – and the higher the profit you can make.
Remember that the wood pellet market is affected by all kinds of outside variables, such as the price of gas, oil, and winter temperatures, along with global environmental laws. Keep these things in mind when it comes time to market your finished product!
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