Pelleting Biomass
Pellet Production Equipment
North America
Buhler (Canada) Inc.
16 Esna Park Drive, Unit 8
Markham, Ontario
L3R 5X1
Phone: (905) 940-6910
Buhler has an interesting section of their Web page dedicated specifically to
wood pelleting. Grass, however, is not mentioned.
Pellet press RWPR with conditioning unit, www.buhlercan.com/woodpelleting.html
CPM and Roskamp Champion
CPM and Roskamp Champion serve the wood industry with a complete line of
pellet mills, hammermills, and coolers. www.cpmroskamp.com/productresults.asp?ID=PelletMills
Bliss Industries, Inc.
P.O. Box 910, Ponca City, OK U.S.A. 74602
Phone (580) 765-7787
www.bliss-industries.com
Bliss manufactures the Pioneer line of pellet mills ranging in size from 80
- 500 HP.
www.bliss-industries.com/pdfs/peltmill.pdf
Pelleting Concepts
International, Inc.
5920 East Central, Suite
207
Wichita, KS 67208
Phone: (316) 686-3432
PCI's focus is on animal feed pelleting using a process that incorporates pressurized steam to reduce pathogens, improve food digestibility, and reduce
energy input.
200 HP mill.
www.pelleting.com/pictures.html#Mill2
Applicability of the process to pelleting grass is unknown.
www.pelleting.com/information.html#
Europe
EcoTre System S. r. l., an Italian company with an innovative pellet mill reported to reduce pelleting energy requirements.
Sprout-Matador, a Danish company manufacturing equipment for grinding, mixing, pelleting, extruding, cooling, drying, and air cleaning. Sprout-Matador is owned by the Austrian industrial group of Andritz AG.
A pellet system brochure can be found at: www.andritz.com/ANONIDZ7FD06DAE/brochure-pm717-usa.pdf
Pelleting
Dr. Alejandro Ching, Director
Dr. Robert Bush, Vice President Applied Research
Alternative Crops Research Center
Northwest Missouri State University
800 University Dr
Maryville, MO 64468-6015
Phone: 816-562-1126 Fax: 816-562-1900
0100003@Acad.NWMissouri.edu
Northwest Missouri State University is an academic state institution that
conducts research on alternative crops and their potential uses and
commercialization.
Currently, the Alternative Crops Research Center is researching the production
and pelletization of switchgrass to be used as an alternate energy fuel to
supplement other types of energy-producing sources such as wood chips which are
being studied in pilot programs.
Pelletization of Switchgrass for Thermal Energy Generation
Northwest Missouri State University
Maryville, Missouri
May 1997
"Because the state of Missouri imports most of the energy used within the state and nearly all, if not all, of that imported energy is fossil fuel, combined with the fact that imported petroleum constitutes nearly one-half of the United States trade deficit, domestic and alternative fuel sources need to be developed to lessen this dependency on outside factors. Switchgrass has been identified as one domestic alternative fuel that holds promise. The objective of this project was to demonstrate the feasibility of manufacturing pellets from switchgrass for use as fuel for thermal-energy generation. This project identified comparative production figures and developed pellet-manufacturing-process costs for switchgrass. The study determined thermal-energy generation costs, identified the pounds per hour for steam (thermal energy) production, and identified competitive cost per ton for switchgrass as compared to other biomass and fossil-fuel sources. The project was conducted in five phases: (1) switchgrass production, (2) pellet manufacture, (3) thermal-energy generation, (4) analysis and report development, and (5) project results dissemination and educational workshop."
www.bioenergyupdate.com/publications/publications_p.html
An Integrated Sawmill and Pellet Mill
Forssjo Bruk AB manages an integrated sawmill and pellet-production plant on the Ericsberg Estates near Katrineholm in central Sweden. The sawmill annually consumes approximately 165,000 m3 of timber with 85% of the finished product exported. The pellet production system placed in service in 1995 has a capacity of about 45,000 metric tons per year. Pellets are sold in bulk for use in district heating plants and bagged for small-scale residential heating systems.
A 15-MW heating system fueled mainly with bark and wet wood chips provides heat for the drying kiln and for drying the sawdust prior to pelleting. Sawdust from the on-site milling operation, as well as other sources, are used.
Log pile.
Log debarking.
Sawdust – a by-product of sawmilling.
Sawdust is moved with a large bucket loader from the sawmill to the pellet plant.
Sawdust is then moved to a large silo.
A large drum dryer reduces sawdust moisture content from 55% to 10%s
Dried sawdust is moved by conveyer to the pellet plant.
One of two Danish Sprout-Matador pellet mills, combined capacity seven tons per hour.
Sawdust enters at the top, pellets are dropped on conveyor at bottom.
Pellet mill.
Large electric motors are required to drive the mills.
Pellet dies, have an average service life of 1,000 - 1,500 hours.
An automatic bagging system is adjacent to the pellet mills.
The easy-to-handle, 16-Kg pellet bag was designed for the Swedish market.
The bagged pellets are automatically loaded on pallets.
The pellet bag labels target multi-country markets.
Pallets of pellets outside warehouse await the heating season.