The European Union in its effort to curb carbon emissions and switch to environment friendly alternatives, mixes wood pellets with coal for thermal power production. This mix is termed as co-firing and can have from 5% to a full 100% wood pellet content.
You must have heard about pellet stoves and boilers. These are ideal for combustion because they have uniform size, density and miniscule amounts of moisture.
- Wood pellets are a kind of biomass used for energy production specially heat around the world. It is formed by compressing wood residue into a specified size by applying high pressure.
- Wood pellets created from wood waste can help create renewable energy. Our environment is in a serious danger and wood pellets like other biomass products provide for an efficient solution.
When getting biomass supplies, it is good to get consultation
for price comparison. Or you can benefit from Ecostrat chips suppliers. They have a massive database on wood chip buyers and suppliers, for smooth and consistent supply.
Producing Wood Chips
Wood chips and other wood waste is fed into a pallet machine that exerts high pressure. During this compression, a naturally occurring element called lignin melts and helps in sticking fibers to form an extruded pellet area. This also gives them a glaze around their exterior surface. They are extruded at over 900 degrees Celsius. This helps them get hardness and dryness.
Benefits of Wood Pallets
- Wood pellets make a good and efficient source of heat as they constitute very low levels of moisture. All the material combusts and converts into energy.
- They are cheap. Their prices are low as compared with other home heating options.
- Storage of wood pellets is convenient. A ton of wood pellets can be fitted into fifty 40 pound bags.
- They are not a threat to environment. They serve as a sustainable source of energy as they use carbon dioxide produced for their own growth.
- Since they originate from wood waste, they are renewable and the availability never ceases.
- They can be locally produced leading to complete energy independence.
Wood Pellets V/S Wood Chips
Although wood chips prices are less, they require a lot more storage space. Therefore, if you add storage costs it does not make that much of difference overall over wood pellets. The higher density (weight per unit volume) of wood pellets makes them a better choice over wood chips. This is in part due to the moisture content. 650 kg of wood pellets have less than 10% moisture content whereas just 200 kg of wood chips contain at least 25% moisture content.
Conclusion
Wood pellets have numerous highlighting benefits that make them an ideal biomass for the production of bioenergy. The world is gradually moving towards new and efficient ways to produce energy and it would not be wrong to say that wood pellets can provide great opportunities for both people in the wood business and people in the energy sector. Ecostrat has economical wood pellet suppliers that can reduce your biomass energy production costs to minimum. Biomass wood pellets make a great source for heat and we will tell you how.