Raw material for wood pellets

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hooter04

Feeling the Heat
Dec 5, 2010
251
Upstate NY
I have a good friend in NC that is a logger,and asked him what he did with the scrap he cut off the logs.He says they just leave it there,and someone else cleans it up or whatever.I asked him if he ever thought about buying a chipper and sending it to a mill for wood pellets or whatever. He says there's no money in it for chipping and hauling to mill.So how much do these mills pay per ton for raw material?
 
You'd have to strip the bark from the wood or you would have major problems with ash...

The last I heard outfits like Marth were paying $15.00/ton for sawdust for raw material......
 
It really depends on the local supply and demand.

A few years back the paper mills around here were paying top dollar for wood chips. Boosting the cost to the pellets mills if they wanted the material.

When sawmills are not cutting as much lumber the supply of chips and sawdust goes down. Driving up the price if the demand is high.

So as you can see it really is a loaded question.
 
The elecrical plant in Portsmouth NH converted one of it's stacks to burn wood chips. They are paying $25 ton delivered. A ton of wood chips is between 28 to 40% water.
Ground down to sawdust without the high water content ~$65 ton. Realize that the big grinders use over $100 worth of deisel an hour and cost close to a million.
 
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