What would the machinery cost that basically takes a tree and turns it into chips and/or sawdust. Seems like pellet prices are "dictates" by sawdust/chip supply. yes, I understand the econommics that it is usually cheaper to buy someone's waste. Neglecting removal of bark. It seems that with all the wood wasted every year. some could at least we diverted to pellet use. The guy up the road from me takes trees root system and all and makes mulch, every type imaginable. 18 wheelers I see load up every day. Mind you I do not live in the sticks. I know that idea has been tossed around here, but in realistic terms how much could it really add/ton
Could someone answer this pellet question.
- Thread starter sstanis
- Start date
-
Active since 1995, Hearth.com is THE place on the internet for free information and advice about wood stoves, pellet stoves and other energy saving equipment.
We strive to provide opinions, articles, discussions and history related to Hearth Products and in a more general sense, energy issues.
We promote the EFFICIENT, RESPONSIBLE, CLEAN and SAFE use of all fuels, whether renewable or fossil. -
Super Cedar firestarters 30% discount Use code Hearth2024 Click here
- Status
There is just ungaudly amounts of mulch that goes to the dump on a daily basis , large tree services normally chip the wood to tke up less space and then dump it.
Roospike said:
Our dump can't get enough of the stuff. Guys like me are out there with the trailers loading up all of the time. People talk about not using it because you don't know what is in it, but I haven't had a problem with it for twenty years.
Mind you I wouldn't eat most vegitables if you put a gun to my head. So worrying about what gets into the garden is not a concern around here.
Hey I mentioned once that all the wood burners that are bucking logs in the backyard should bag those shavings and send them off to the pellet mills. :cheese:
On a serious side The sawdust gets split between pellets, paper mills, duraflame logs, maybe even bio bricks...... There is a supply & demand on the sawdust side too..
On a serious side The sawdust gets split between pellets, paper mills, duraflame logs, maybe even bio bricks...... There is a supply & demand on the sawdust side too..
Pellets take a lot of saw dust.
compressed about 9x their volume so figure 8 hand fulls fo sawdust to make one hand full of pellets.
compressed about 9x their volume so figure 8 hand fulls fo sawdust to make one hand full of pellets.
hearthtools said:
Great point. So if you are going to pay for that pellet mill and related chippers, driers, storage and bagging equipment, say $1-2 million, you need one hell of a lot of sawdust. Remember you need to control the bark to stay premium, and you can't let rocks, mud and other foreign matter contaminate your equipment. So how much do you need of raw material?????? Does more than the average saw operation seem right? The major makers are part of major saw operations. If your pellet output is a million pounds, how many Billion board feet of lumber are you producing?
My understanding is that Pellet stoves are ultra fussy about the pellet size and shape, and a chipper produces more or less random sizes and shapes within a certain range. I suspect that it would be difficult / expen$ive to make a chipper that produced a size and consistency that would feed a pellet stove.
So you need some kind of new stove design, not easy, but probably doable.
Next you have the problem of drying the chips. Most stuff that gets chipped is still green, so you need to season it so that it will burn properly, just like you do cordwood. The problem is that chips don't circulate air well enough to dry if they are just piled up, so you need some sort of drying setup.... Keep the volume that you'll be dealing with in mind!
Or maybe you can burn them green, if you have a stove that drys them as you feed - possibly something like the Sedora stoves I've seen some folks mention here. They claim to be able to burn green chips with their "top down" gravity feed setup that lets the fuel pre-heat and dry before it reaches the bottom of the stove and the fire area. However what will that cost for your heat output if lots of energy is going to be put into drying the chips?
The best option I've seen is to possibly try building some sort of "wood / trash to energy" plant that can deal with this kind of material on a scale that is large enough to handle these sorts of problems.
Gooserider
So you need some kind of new stove design, not easy, but probably doable.
Next you have the problem of drying the chips. Most stuff that gets chipped is still green, so you need to season it so that it will burn properly, just like you do cordwood. The problem is that chips don't circulate air well enough to dry if they are just piled up, so you need some sort of drying setup.... Keep the volume that you'll be dealing with in mind!
Or maybe you can burn them green, if you have a stove that drys them as you feed - possibly something like the Sedora stoves I've seen some folks mention here. They claim to be able to burn green chips with their "top down" gravity feed setup that lets the fuel pre-heat and dry before it reaches the bottom of the stove and the fire area. However what will that cost for your heat output if lots of energy is going to be put into drying the chips?
The best option I've seen is to possibly try building some sort of "wood / trash to energy" plant that can deal with this kind of material on a scale that is large enough to handle these sorts of problems.
Gooserider
Gooserider said:
Doesn't the act of compressing the wood dry it to a large degree? Suppose it were compressed even harder? I would also think that the new stove is just an EPA wood stove and the fuel is a brick or log that is compressed super hard. The chips don't seem like anywhere near the issue in the larger format.
UncleRich, I don't know any answers for sure, just raising the issues that I think would be relevant to the question. My gut feeling is that chips are probably not viable on a small scale, but my understanding is that there are at least some places where they are used in larger scale facilities for things like power generation. How cost effective this is compared to dead dinosaurs I don't know, or even if it is cost effective compared to the cost of landfilling the chips.
"Green think" may be well and good, but I don't think energy solutions that aren't sensible from an economic standpoint make sense. Right now we burn dino-fuels and trash most of the chips. Any viable solution needs to cost less per unit than the cost of alternatives and / or the net cost of trashing the chips.
Whatever you do with the chips, there will be a cost of processing - whether it's tailing fees at the landfill, or processing costs to make something else out of them. If you make something else, then presumably you can sell the something and recoup some or all of the processing costs. However the bottom line total of processing costs less the profits has to be less than the trash disposal cost or it makes more sense to trash the stuff.
I don't have any concrete answers, but my suspicion is that small scale (home-owner or small business) processing wouldn't be cost effective, but that larger scale efforts might be. This is because machinery capacity usually increases faster than it's cost, plus on a larger scale you will need fewer people per amount of production, get better machine utilization, etc.
I also have severe doubts about the economics / efficiency of processed biomass fuels. To me it doesn't make a tremendous amount of sense to put a lot of energy into processing biomass so as to turn it into pellets or bio-bricks or whatever, just so you can take it somewhere else to burn it. Making pellets or ???? out of sawdust makes some level of sense since the sawdust is already being produced anyway, so it isn't that much more work to make the sawdust into pellets than it would have been to pay for disposing of the sawdust. But I think the picture is not as good when you start processing trees to make the sawdust to make the pellets out of.
It would probably be better to have some way to utilize the tree or whatever more directly, so as to minimize the processing. A large scale plant potentially would have the ability to do this - chip stuff up and use the plant's "waste heat" to dry it, then burn it and use the resulting heat to generate electricity or some such. Another advantage for a larger facility is that they would have less need for perfect combustion, as they can employ stack scrubbers and other techniques to clean up their emissions that aren't practical for the home consumer.
Eventually I'll actually be looking into this more, as a while back I got appointed to our town's "Composting Committee" that is supposed to be looking into composting or other techniques for trying to reduce our trash stream.
Warren: I don't know what compressing wood does to it in terms of drying, I suspect it would get rid of some water but not enough to eliminate the need for additional heat and drying. I also suspect that you would find larger chips MUCH harder to compress than sawdust, even if trying to make a larger form factor pellet.
Gooserider
"Green think" may be well and good, but I don't think energy solutions that aren't sensible from an economic standpoint make sense. Right now we burn dino-fuels and trash most of the chips. Any viable solution needs to cost less per unit than the cost of alternatives and / or the net cost of trashing the chips.
Whatever you do with the chips, there will be a cost of processing - whether it's tailing fees at the landfill, or processing costs to make something else out of them. If you make something else, then presumably you can sell the something and recoup some or all of the processing costs. However the bottom line total of processing costs less the profits has to be less than the trash disposal cost or it makes more sense to trash the stuff.
I don't have any concrete answers, but my suspicion is that small scale (home-owner or small business) processing wouldn't be cost effective, but that larger scale efforts might be. This is because machinery capacity usually increases faster than it's cost, plus on a larger scale you will need fewer people per amount of production, get better machine utilization, etc.
I also have severe doubts about the economics / efficiency of processed biomass fuels. To me it doesn't make a tremendous amount of sense to put a lot of energy into processing biomass so as to turn it into pellets or bio-bricks or whatever, just so you can take it somewhere else to burn it. Making pellets or ???? out of sawdust makes some level of sense since the sawdust is already being produced anyway, so it isn't that much more work to make the sawdust into pellets than it would have been to pay for disposing of the sawdust. But I think the picture is not as good when you start processing trees to make the sawdust to make the pellets out of.
It would probably be better to have some way to utilize the tree or whatever more directly, so as to minimize the processing. A large scale plant potentially would have the ability to do this - chip stuff up and use the plant's "waste heat" to dry it, then burn it and use the resulting heat to generate electricity or some such. Another advantage for a larger facility is that they would have less need for perfect combustion, as they can employ stack scrubbers and other techniques to clean up their emissions that aren't practical for the home consumer.
Eventually I'll actually be looking into this more, as a while back I got appointed to our town's "Composting Committee" that is supposed to be looking into composting or other techniques for trying to reduce our trash stream.
Warren: I don't know what compressing wood does to it in terms of drying, I suspect it would get rid of some water but not enough to eliminate the need for additional heat and drying. I also suspect that you would find larger chips MUCH harder to compress than sawdust, even if trying to make a larger form factor pellet.
Gooserider
Gooserider said:
Yeah I agree Goose. Processing the pellets etc... takes energy to produce and deliver.
On the wood compression... it depends on the size of the chip.
Not saying a stove that uses chips. But chips ground into sawdust. which could be used for pellets
This guy is working on a furnace that will burn green wood chips. He gets around the feeding problems of irregularly shaped peices by running it in batches, rather than continous / Auger feed (I guess he plans to store the heat for later release)
he says that buring them green loses you about 10% of the energy
http://www.sredmond.com/vthr_index.htm
he says that buring them green loses you about 10% of the energy
http://www.sredmond.com/vthr_index.htm
Anton Smirnov said:
Anton:
This site is very informative. Went through it a while back, excellent explanation of the burn process and how chip burners work. It also does a very good job of explaining why it is necessary to use green wood, and a higher moisture content. The equpment necessary for efficient burning is tremendous. Hope they can get a production stove on the market. I remember a test project in the Spokane/Coeur D'Alene where one of the forest products companies and a school district to heat a school with slash. That's the non-usable trees and scrub that is cleared but not marketable. Usually burned on site, if allowed, or left in place. Anyone in Spokane know about the project?
There is another thread that just started a little while ago with a person that is trying to sell domestic size pellet mills - you need to get a source of small size particles - sawdust or other biomass. For wood the indicated equipment would be a chipper feeding into a hammer mill to breakup the chips. This unit just turns pre-powdered material into pellets - $2700 for ~1-200 lbs / hour.
Sorry no link as I already closed it in my browser...
Gooserider
Sorry no link as I already closed it in my browser...
Gooserider
Anton Smirnov said:
Great info Anton. It's the first time I've heard about a scaled down heater. This would also be worthy of a link in the green room. I'm going to investigate further. I have a little project in mind for a greenhouse heater that might work with this.
- Feb 27, 2007
- 145
Good Day Everyone,
I am new to the forum, but I can shed some light on the original posters question. I work as a Quality Control Manager at a forest products operation in Alberta,Canada. Our plant does not produce "pellets" but I do have some experience with the waste systems involved in pellet manufacturing.
To start, it would not be cost effective to actually use wood chips as a waste product to burn in a stove. Wood chips are sold to pulp and paper mills at a pretty decent premium. Large and small operations would be crazy to pass up this kind of value in a considerably lower priced product. I can see if the chips were contaminated with plastic, or dumped on the ground, then they would be useless to pulp mills, and their market value would drop to about $3.00 a ton.
However... Green chips will not burn, because they are over the fibre saturation point of the wood (30%+ moisture content), so they would need to be dried somehow....which gets expensive...
The majority of pellet producers, use planer shavings as the primary raw product used in pellet manufacturing. Reason being, is planer shavings are already dried to about 12-19% moisture content. Which is required for graded lumber. And also happens to be the ideal moisture content for burning wood. As well, seeing as there is no moisture in the wood, they compress better. And no cost is added in drying tthe material
Not to many pellet producers use actual "sawdust" in the production of pellets, again, reason being, sawdust originates from the sawing of green lumber which is above the fibre saturation point, and water is often continually sprayed on saw systems in large mill's to keep the saws cool. Some do however, and they have to dry the sawdust out, again this adds to the cost. This is why "Planer Shavings" are usually the waste product of choice.
Some operations have vacumm type trucks, that tap into the planer mill's shavings exhaust systems and fill their trucks this way. Other operations have bins where the planer waste systems and fed into. This allows large trucks to just drive under and have their load dumped in. Others have the pellet plant linked right to the planers waste system.
In response to the original question of is there a machine that can turn a tree into sawdust? The answer is yes. However, at any level, this is not cost effective. Timber is worth in excess of $50/cubic meter, and to turn it into something that is worth $3.00 a ton, does not make any sense on any level, most importantly on the level of using our natural resources correctly. There is no way governments would allow any operation to do this. This is why all pellet mills are linked to other sawmills waste systems, as a recovery/value add on.
It would make more sense to purchase a portable sawmill, and make your own lumber..then to hog green timber, and then dry the sawdust.
I read through all the posts, and no one actually touched base on the actual production process. Ignorance is bliss I guess.
I do not think pellet production on a small scale would be a cost effective venture. Same goes for the chips.
Logging practices down south, are different however...it still doesnt make sense to turn trees into pellets without extracting lumber, or any kind of value from the log first.....you wont be in business long.
I am new to the forum, but I can shed some light on the original posters question. I work as a Quality Control Manager at a forest products operation in Alberta,Canada. Our plant does not produce "pellets" but I do have some experience with the waste systems involved in pellet manufacturing.
To start, it would not be cost effective to actually use wood chips as a waste product to burn in a stove. Wood chips are sold to pulp and paper mills at a pretty decent premium. Large and small operations would be crazy to pass up this kind of value in a considerably lower priced product. I can see if the chips were contaminated with plastic, or dumped on the ground, then they would be useless to pulp mills, and their market value would drop to about $3.00 a ton.
However... Green chips will not burn, because they are over the fibre saturation point of the wood (30%+ moisture content), so they would need to be dried somehow....which gets expensive...
The majority of pellet producers, use planer shavings as the primary raw product used in pellet manufacturing. Reason being, is planer shavings are already dried to about 12-19% moisture content. Which is required for graded lumber. And also happens to be the ideal moisture content for burning wood. As well, seeing as there is no moisture in the wood, they compress better. And no cost is added in drying tthe material
Not to many pellet producers use actual "sawdust" in the production of pellets, again, reason being, sawdust originates from the sawing of green lumber which is above the fibre saturation point, and water is often continually sprayed on saw systems in large mill's to keep the saws cool. Some do however, and they have to dry the sawdust out, again this adds to the cost. This is why "Planer Shavings" are usually the waste product of choice.
Some operations have vacumm type trucks, that tap into the planer mill's shavings exhaust systems and fill their trucks this way. Other operations have bins where the planer waste systems and fed into. This allows large trucks to just drive under and have their load dumped in. Others have the pellet plant linked right to the planers waste system.
In response to the original question of is there a machine that can turn a tree into sawdust? The answer is yes. However, at any level, this is not cost effective. Timber is worth in excess of $50/cubic meter, and to turn it into something that is worth $3.00 a ton, does not make any sense on any level, most importantly on the level of using our natural resources correctly. There is no way governments would allow any operation to do this. This is why all pellet mills are linked to other sawmills waste systems, as a recovery/value add on.
It would make more sense to purchase a portable sawmill, and make your own lumber..then to hog green timber, and then dry the sawdust.
I read through all the posts, and no one actually touched base on the actual production process. Ignorance is bliss I guess.
I do not think pellet production on a small scale would be a cost effective venture. Same goes for the chips.
Logging practices down south, are different however...it still doesnt make sense to turn trees into pellets without extracting lumber, or any kind of value from the log first.....you wont be in business long.
Havlat:
Welcome to the forum. Thanks for your insight into making pellets. Too often we try to minimize the actual magnitude of the industrial processes. Sort of like thinking it would be nothing to throw together a cast iron foundry to make stoves for you and the neighbors. Some of the forum members have a lot of experience in the stove manufacturing field. Others have some experience with the pellet making end, but any insights you can give will be greatly appreciated. Thanks for joining up.
Welcome to the forum. Thanks for your insight into making pellets. Too often we try to minimize the actual magnitude of the industrial processes. Sort of like thinking it would be nothing to throw together a cast iron foundry to make stoves for you and the neighbors. Some of the forum members have a lot of experience in the stove manufacturing field. Others have some experience with the pellet making end, but any insights you can give will be greatly appreciated. Thanks for joining up.
Hi Havlat:
As you point out everything depends on the cost of materials.
A while ago I posted this link:
(broken link removed to http://www.workingforest.com/02-news/article.php?id=2724)
This artical briefly mentions using whole trees for pellets in BC.
Have you heard anything about this? Apperantly they developed the whole tree technology in Scandinavia, and want to bring it to BC (due to the beetle damage).
Also interesting to note that the market (in Europe) wants pellets at $180 a tonne. Other manufactures say it cannot be done, but the Swedes who are backing the plant seem to think that they can turn a profit.
As you point out everything depends on the cost of materials.
A while ago I posted this link:
(broken link removed to http://www.workingforest.com/02-news/article.php?id=2724)
This artical briefly mentions using whole trees for pellets in BC.
Have you heard anything about this? Apperantly they developed the whole tree technology in Scandinavia, and want to bring it to BC (due to the beetle damage).
Also interesting to note that the market (in Europe) wants pellets at $180 a tonne. Other manufactures say it cannot be done, but the Swedes who are backing the plant seem to think that they can turn a profit.
Havlat24 said:
Great reply Havlat, very interesting reading. What does it mean to 'hog green lumber', that's a new one to me.
All the local pellets here come from Canada. But there is a lot of planar shavings here in Maine. A neighbor of mine has a tractor trailer converted to hauling shavings from lumber mills. He has a diesel on the back with a big blower that he uses to deliver the shavings to chicken farms, I guess they swap out the shavings quite often. He gets his shavings for free and gets pretty good money to deliver them to the farms. Just another interesting use for shavings up here that may go unnoticed. I find it hard to believe there are no pellet manufactureres in Maine. Anyone want to do a startup with me?
Ed in Maine said:
Who knows, maybe you could even get a position lower on the chain and pick up the "slightly used" chips from the chicken farm - they should still be flammable, remember that we crossed the prairies on Buffalo Chips....
- Oct 25, 2006
- 391
Greetings,
I had a bunch of limbs from the trees cut of of our property and broke down and rented a chipper to rid my life of the mess. Some of the limbs were 4" dia. after chipping all day I had quite a large pile.These limbs were laying downed for 8months and when shoveled into our basement stove burned quite well.
Mike
I had a bunch of limbs from the trees cut of of our property and broke down and rented a chipper to rid my life of the mess. Some of the limbs were 4" dia. after chipping all day I had quite a large pile.These limbs were laying downed for 8months and when shoveled into our basement stove burned quite well.
Mike
- Feb 27, 2007
- 145
Good Day Folks,
Like the link a few posts up..a hog is just a machine that grinds up solid wood in any length or diameter.
The pine beetle infestion is devistating, and sadly its making its way into alberta, and were already changing our logging initiatives to try and harvet as much of the beetle susceptable (sp?) timber before those little critters take a strangle hold on our pine timber stands. Its my understanding alot of BC's super sawmills were built to process this timber as quickly as possible to try to minimize the impact, however, its my belief that the beetle is pretty much unstoppable, and barring a solid cold snap of -40C for a few weeks the beetle will travel right across Canada. Thankfully our operations fibre diet is 70% spruce and only 30% pine.
I did not even think about the beetle infested timber, as this would without a doubt be a cheaper way to aquire timber, and grind it up for pellets. The canadian government is probablly basically willing to give these stands away. I believe theres a year or 2 before the timber becomes unusable for lumber? My area of expertise doesnt lie on the forestry side. Im basically involved in cost control, product size control, moisture sorting, and various other Quality Control issues within the plywood & lumber plant.
I do know we send our planer shavings to a hog, although our volume of lumber produced is about 5-10% of what some of our super sawmill's in BC are capable of. Those mill's really are amazing.... To produce 2 million board feet of lumber in 8 hours is unfathomable.
Theres a mill across the street from us that produces lumber, and has a pellet mill. You guys south of the border might actually use their product, they're produced by Vanderwell Contractors?
Take it easy guys.
Like the link a few posts up..a hog is just a machine that grinds up solid wood in any length or diameter.
The pine beetle infestion is devistating, and sadly its making its way into alberta, and were already changing our logging initiatives to try and harvet as much of the beetle susceptable (sp?) timber before those little critters take a strangle hold on our pine timber stands. Its my understanding alot of BC's super sawmills were built to process this timber as quickly as possible to try to minimize the impact, however, its my belief that the beetle is pretty much unstoppable, and barring a solid cold snap of -40C for a few weeks the beetle will travel right across Canada. Thankfully our operations fibre diet is 70% spruce and only 30% pine.
I did not even think about the beetle infested timber, as this would without a doubt be a cheaper way to aquire timber, and grind it up for pellets. The canadian government is probablly basically willing to give these stands away. I believe theres a year or 2 before the timber becomes unusable for lumber? My area of expertise doesnt lie on the forestry side. Im basically involved in cost control, product size control, moisture sorting, and various other Quality Control issues within the plywood & lumber plant.
I do know we send our planer shavings to a hog, although our volume of lumber produced is about 5-10% of what some of our super sawmill's in BC are capable of. Those mill's really are amazing.... To produce 2 million board feet of lumber in 8 hours is unfathomable.
Theres a mill across the street from us that produces lumber, and has a pellet mill. You guys south of the border might actually use their product, they're produced by Vanderwell Contractors?
Take it easy guys.
- Status
Similar threads
- Locked
