wood pellets development

Wood pellets can be easily found in peoples’ lives in many countries, but there are still a lot of people who are not familiar with them. This blog will help you learn more about wood pellets.


In 1980s, wood pellets started to be used as one of the house heating and cooking fuels in the USA and Canada. And then, wood pellets were quickly spread to Austria and northern European countries like Norway and Switzerland. And in 1999 and 2000, wood pellets started blooming in Germany. Until 2008, there were already 80 thousand families using wood pellets as their house heating fuel and water boiling fuel in this country. And there were over 8 thousand wood pellet combustion equipment that had been used only in North Rhine.

WOOD PELLET SPECIFICATION AND MANUFACTURE STANDARD

The raw materials for wood pellet plant are normally natural dry wood wastes, such as wood shavings, wood chips and natural dead wood, there are no chemical additives in the materials. After high pressure compression, the wood materials are formed into uniformed wood pellets with the diameters of 6mm or 8mm and length 2-3 inches.
 
To ensure the wood pellet quality, many governments have established their own wood pellet standards. The Germany wood pellet standard is DIN plus, Austria uses the wood pellet standard ÖNORM M 1735. These standards are nearly the most strict wood pellet standard in the world. The moisture content of wood pellets must under 10%, and the ash content is no more than 0.5%, the sulphur content must lower than 0.02%. Use these wood pellet standards, the wood pellet plants and distributors must get the licenses to manufacture and sell wood pellets.

WOOD PELLETS ADVANTAGES

There are several advantages of using wood pellets as the substitute of fossil fuel.
 

GREENHOUSE GAS REDUCTION

Compare to fossil fuels, wood pellet fuel is more harmonize with environmental protection concepts. Using wood pellets to generate 1MWh energy will cause 35kg carbon dioxide to be released in the air. And if we use electricity, the carbon dioxide be released will be 935kg, and if we use oil fuel, it will release 375kg carbon dioxide. For wood pellet manufacturers, the energy requirements for wood pellet manufacture is also lower than fossil fuels.

LOW TRANSPORTATION COST

As we all know, the large crude oil carrier oil-spill accidents and oil pipe crack problems happen occasionally. The accident will not only cause the fuel loss, but also cause underground water pollution. Using wood pellets can effectively avoid these kinds of accidents.

STABLE SUPPLY SOURCE

Wood material is environmental friendly and recyclable, we can get the raw material from local. Take German as an example, the wood materials to produce wood pellets is two thirds of the total flowing forest zone. There are more than 40 wood pellet plants in German, with the fast growing wood pellet demand, the number of wood pellet plant will increase, too.

PRICE ADVANTAGES

The price of wood pellet is not as easy to fluctuate as coal, oil and gas. The price of wood pellet is stable so that the customers can have a more reliable spending forecast by themselves.