Pellet Plant Photos - sneak peek

[webbie]

Not sure if I posted these yet, but here is a little preview of my recent tour of New England Wood Pellets.

A full article and tour will be created when I have some extra time.

One pic is of the bridge that trucks pull onto - the bridge then rises up and dumps the sawdust.

The other is perhaps the most impressive piece of equipment in the plant - a 60 foot long spinning dryer! The sawdust is tumbled in this along with very hot air which is created by burning 15% of the input! In other words, 15% of all the sawdust brought into the plant is used to dry the other 85%.

The blue machine is one of the actual Pellet Mills. If you look near the bottom of that pic, you will see the rectangular conveyor (partially covered with sheet metal) that takes the pellets away.

As you will see when I post the full article, making Pellets is not something that can be done easily nor on the cheap. In fact, it could be considered even more difficult than stove production, since there is less history and resources avaialble. The crew at New England Pellet are constantly inventing their own processes and machines in order to streamline the production. No doubt that eventually such a plant will run with 10 people or so as the total staff......but it will cost $$ to get it that way.

 

[Eric Johnson]

We ran an article about NE Wood Pellets in the April issue of The Northern Logger. If anyone is interested, I can make a pdf and post a link.

 

[Willhound]

Neat shots Craig. We have a local OSB (Oriented Strand Board) plant, used to be known as "chipboard". Some people call it Aspenite, but I think that's a trade name.
Anyway, a similar process, except instead of the chip trucks dropping their trailer, the hoist showing in your first shot lifts up the entire truck, tractor and all. Even the driver used to stay in the cab, but I think they are required to get out now, since one rollled off one day.
They use a similar process to dry the chips, but partially fired by chips, partly by natural gas. Gives our local fire crew a workout two or three times a year.

At the end, instead of stamping out pellets, it outputs flat sheet product up to 24 feet wide by 72 feet long, which is then cut/trimmed into various sizes.

 

[webbie]

OSB is amazing stuff - what a great use for less than perfect trees!

I read up on it a bit, and this is a science in itself - for that board to be structural. The strands have to be in various directions just like plywood.

 

[wg_bent]

We ran an article about NE Wood Pellets in the April issue of The Northern Logger. If anyone is interested, I can make a pdf and post a link.

Please do Eric.

 

[GVA]

Hey check out www.pelletheat.com it's NE pellets web site they take you on a photo tour of how they make pellets, i'm sure things are different now than when these were put on the site though...
Cute girl on the homepage too!!