The Facts on Wood Pellets
What do they look like? Wood pellets are small cylindrical pellets made from wood waste (e.g., wood shavings and sawdust). They are shredded and compressed under high pressure. Woods natural glue – lignin - is the binding agent which holds the pellets together.
Are they easy to use? Pellets are clean and easy to use. Typically they come in 20kg bags. They are a compact fuel and offer maximum convenience. Pellet stoves/burners fuelled by pellets radiate a pleasant, comfortable heat and still maintain a visual flame. The pellets are delivered to the stove/burner by an auger from a small hopper in the back of the unit that stores up to 20 kgs at a time. These systems also feature auto ignition for conveniencce.
Where can they be used? – Wood pellets are suitable for both residential and commercial users. A Pellet Burner offers an ideal home heating solution Pellet boilers produce hot water for central heating systems and for domestic hot water. For commercial and institutional applications, existing boilers can be converted to run on pellets.
Why Use Woodfuel?
Bioenergy projects avoid carbon emissions, enhance environment protection, and help the security of energy supply. These are national issues but for local communities the primary driving force are much more likely to be employment or job creation, contribution to regional economy and income improvement. Woodfuel creates more local jobs than any other renewable energy alternative.
Advantages of Wood Pellets
- Low emissions – As pellet stove emissions are so low they can be burned in most areas even those with burning restrictions.
- Easy installation - Only minimal clearance is needed to install the burner/stove.
- High Combustion – As pellets have a near total combustion (around 98.5%) pellet stoves produce virtually no creosote.
- Easy to store - One ton of wood pellets has the heat value of about 5 m³ of firewood and stacks easily in one third of the space. This makes it possible to easily store fuel for the entire season.
- Low waste ash production - A 20kg bag of Wood Pellets produces around 100gms of ash.
- Environmental advantages – Sustainable source of fuel. Pellets are an environmentally friendly source of heat, they are CO2 neutral both in combustion and storage. Wood pellets are a clean, environmentally friendly, natural, renewable fuel resource. Reduces waste destined for landfills and the cost of disposing waste is greatly reduced.
- High efficiency - The efficiency rating can be as high as 94%, depending on the model and heat output required.
- Easy to use – The Pellets are clean and easy to use, they flow like a liquid and can work as part of an automated feeding system. They are easy to ignite and to handle generally. They can be used in stoves/burners and boilers.
- Continuous operation – Typically the burner has a large hopper and the stove can burn continuously for several days, depending on the heat output required.