Dumb questions about wood pellets. 😂

[BargeMonkey]

 Pellets aren't a huge market up here but they still make up 10-20% ? I see people buying them, I've had a few customers over the yrs go to pellets. I'm going to buy some in bulk to sell at my store along with bundled wood and probably bagged wood. Because my last name ends in "Berg" 😂 we are always looking to utilize or squeeze a dollar out of something and we are pretty good at it.
What I want to know, and I've looked around the internet and haven't found much, what is actually involved in pellets ? Asked a couple people and never gotten a straight answer. We have so much WASTE, wood bark, sawdust we practically give away, jobs where I drag back mountains of tops and brush. Asked a while ago about a chipper, still shopping but going to pick one up this yr for some work we have lined up. Has anyone ever made pellets ? Im not talking huge production but is it feasible to make 500-1000 ton a yr and cut out the middle man ? Have zero waste at my sawmill, zero waste on my log jobs, kind of what I'm wondering and maybe it's a foolish idea.

[thecfarm]

I think and only think,you would make more money buying in bulk and than bagging it yourself.  ;)  I work in a hardware store,in a small town and we sell trailer trucks loads of bagged pellets,40 pound bags. Some buy a ton,but most buy by the bag. Some just don't have the room to store a ton,and some don't want the bother of it. Get 2-3-4 bags on the way home.

[Southside]

Back around 2006 we looked into pellets.  The truth is there is no cheap way to make them, well you can make em cheap, but nobody will buy them, they don't feed well and don't burn worth a hoot.  We were looking at $1 million per line.  Ash content has to be low - so whole log debarking.  Your feed stock needs to be dry - so you need a dryer, then a hammer mill as the material has to be consistent, then the pellet mill itself, you need a cooler as they come out hot from the compression forces, a bagger and sealer, conveyors, pallet wrapper.  Don't skimp on dust collection - more than a few pellet plants have gone BOOM!! and many have burnt to the ground.  Then there is the cash flow issue - not many sales to be had in August.  Do people make money in pellets - of course, but I think you need to own the set up outright and have the right feed stock for there to be any chance of seeing a return. 

[Gary_C]

http://glrepellets.com/about-us/

You might check out the above web site. There was a lot of interest in small scale extruders back in the 2008 time period but I think for the most part their rear ends got kicked by the growing supply and lower prices for natural gas. All but the three loggers who started this company and survived.

There is a demand from a select few who put in some fad of the day corn and pellet burners. Those people did not want to cut and split their own wood or buy corn at $2.00+/bushel and were willing to pay a little more for the convenience of bagged pellets.

I even have a guy that lives a few miles from me that has some sort of patient on a process for making pellets from corn cobs and has even made some on rented extruder time but he is a dreamer that I think has been stopped by poor economics.

[mike_belben]

Theres a lot of pellets made in western PA going to buffalo by the semiload per day, and also up into mass and NH so the demand is there.  It was a load i called on and spoke to a broker who had the account, when i was considering getting my MC authority. 

Ever see a full gravel pit screening operation.. From shot rock to stone dust?  A pellet plant looks that but add in a dryer, dust collector, pellet press and bagger.  All indoors naturally.   The vids ive seen of asian ones had like 10-20 dudes running the line.  I mean they probably only made like 3 bananas a day but that might be a tad rich for your blood! :P

Are there are charcoal plants near you?  Kerry plant and royal oak are right by me.. They bring in semi loads all day long of sawdust and wood chip that get tipped out of dryvans into feed hopper.  Make liquid smoke flavoring at kerry and charcoal at royal oak, side by side businesses (used to be one)  Puffergas would probably like the scenery, huge pyrolisis cookers.

[Resonator]

x2 Southside logger. There's a large commercial pellet plant not far from me, it took them years to build up the business, and they have millions invested in the plant. Pellets are only part of their business, they also do animal bedding and other wood products that sell year round. There's a lot involved in getting the process right. From moisture content, to adding (vegetable) oil to the mix, to getting the roller/die heat and pressure right to make consistent quality product. As well as packaging, weighing, palletising, warehousing, distribution, etc.

[BargeMonkey]

 I appreciate it guys. Not trying to go wild but the idea of making a few ton a week from waste / chips seems like a good idea, 1mil+ to make pellets 😂, take a long time to see daylight on that one. No real great solution for the waste, we probably produce 20+yd a week, it adds up but not enough to send it to a chip plant.
  Another guy down the road has a shavings mill, I don't see where he makes any money on it, gets most of the wood for almost nothing.

[starmac]

The big pellet mill here was several million start up, not 1 mill, but even after 5 years they had never had a year where they could operate on the capital they generated.  I could see a lot and I mean a lot of money wasted there though.

I do not know a lot, but what I do know is junk does not make good pellets, they probably have as much waste as what you are talking about. When they built it, the draw was they could take all wood. Now all we have available here is spruce, aspen,cottonwood, and birch.
After the first year, that all changed, they would take spruce, and aspen, but a load could not have over 10% aspen, no cotton wood and what birch they had left in their decks was sold for firewood.  It seemed there was too much ash involved with aspen and cottonwood and the birch didn't bond well, but mainly was too hard on the hammermills.
Even after they learned about what wood would work and what wouldn't their pellets still didn't sell as good as imported pellets, I do not know if that was a marketing thing or what.

Brad and Tom at dry creek has a small scale pellet mill that was successful. As far as I know they have not run it the last three years, just because they don't have time to mess with it anymore, customers have tried to get them to fire it back up. They do however utilize all their waste, and even chip tops on some logging jobs. The dust is augered straight off their mill to a hopper feeding the heater that heats all their buildings and two big dry kilns, another big hopper that chips are blown into feeds it also., there is pretty much zero waste in there operation.

[tawilson]

Just throwing it out there, maybe it would be easier/cheaper to get in the mulch business.

[Logger RK]

I do know Aspen chips are made into cow bedding and even kitty litter at GLRE. I thinks it's a good way to market Aspen tops.  We just need more cows & cats this way ;D

[Stephen Alford]

 The use of wood pellets here staggered a bit due to availability. Then for awhile the size of pellets became the issue. They were being made from small to the size of hockey pucks. There is now a supplier that has free delivery province wide. Air to air arrived on the scene and has out performed the competition.  Tawilson  has a good idea for an add on.  The tweak here was to dye the mulch to meet urban demand. For example our soils are red so the mulch that was dyed red sold,  by the bucket at the mill site used to work nice. The thrifty would get a bucket of sawdust for filler , then buy the colored mulch to put on top. Hard to fault "Mr Thrifty"   :D

[woodmaker]

I have a friend who did what you are thinking of doing.  He had the pellet mill enclosed in a trailer box,and did a lot of experimentation  on bonding of pellets etc. He used it as an off-shoot of his grinding wood for bedding business. I am pretty sure that the tops wouldn't work,too much ash and didnt bond correctly. I know that he gained a lot of insight into what works and what doesn't,but the final thing was that he ended up selling it all and not doing pellets. If you want to talk to him,I could ask him if he would speak with you.

[snowstorm]

timberline mag.had a write up about the pellet mill in cornith .me. a year or so ago most of theres were made from fir

[WV Sawmiller]

   I asked basically same question in this thread and came to the conclusion the technology is not there yet for it to be feasible/cost effective for a small operator like me to make them. Good luck.

LINK

[dustintheblood]

I sent you a PM about the pellet thing.... 

The essence is that I've got quite a substantial amount of data to support exactly what everyone else is already stating so far in this thread.

[mike_belben]

I think itd be easier to feed your wood waste into a boiler to power a 3phase turbine and sell power. 

More than likely the trojans in the NY system have already found ways to remove any profit potential from this.  Either by banning it, or unachievable "environmental" compliance, or net metering legislation, or taxation etc  etc. 

That winds it down to only making sense for  powering your own industrial 3phase consumption.  Rural wood fired factory sorta thing.  Im making assumptions, havent researched the details of this in your state.

[Dave Shepard]

 There was a mill in Berlin, NY that was burning their waste to make steam, but I'm petty sure they gave it up.

[Grizzly]

The below link is similar to what I saw when I researched Chinese made plants. Very economical and really wants to look like an attractive idea. The quality of pellets makes them virtually unsaleable and thus defeats the purpose of pellets. If all you want to do is burn biofuel you can do so without pelleting it. Just like pelleting chicken manure; it's a great idea for transporting waste from one area to another but ultimately didn't pencil out economically.

https://range-road.ca/products/pellet-makers/

Silvana Trading out of Quebec used to sell a pellet mill that was fully contained within a 20ft container.

Everything I've read so far about pelleting being a great idea is correct as well as what's written about it being a non-feasible idea. For myself I'm looking at a Viessman biofuel boiler as an efficient way of turning waste into energy.

In Prince George, BC there was a project where they were using biofuel boilers to make heat energy and were then selling the heat into a large building complex. I'd like that idea but my closest neighbor is 2 miles away.

[Dave Shepard]

Whatever happened to the Bio-Mizer?

[starmac]

Whatever happened to the Bio-Mizer?

The small one, after a couple of years of testing and refining was scrapped. I understand that they were also working on and testing some larger industrial ones, but never heard if they eventually were put on the market or not.

[Crusarius]

I wonder if you could use something like a screw drive from an air compressor to make pellets? Everything I read said you do not have to add anything as the oils in the wood will create the bond. I could be wrong cause I didn't really do that much research but in my head it seems like a sounds concept.

The other option instead of pellets is firestarter blocks. Little bit of wax a square mold and some pressure. Something that could easily be obtained with a 12 ton harbor freight press.

Just random ideas, thinking out loud.

[bitternut]

We had a timber sale on part of our woods about 4 years ago and the winning bidder was a timber company that just happened to be in the wood pellet business.

Our forester had marked it as a release cut for the rear of our property that is mostly hard maple but he also laid out a new road that needed trees removed so there ended up a mixed bag of hardwoods. There was quite a few slash tree marked also along the new roadway path.

I assumed that since the winning bidder made pellets that they would take all the slash and maybe all the tops also. My hopes for ending up with lots of firewood material seemed doomed. :(

Well, that didn't happen. In fact, they even left quite a pile of wood at the landing that had some defect that kept it from being a saw log. The logger also left quite a few trees uncut along the new road with a diagonal line of paint ( slash ) for future firewood that is easy to reach. My fears of not ending up with a great source of easy firewood certainly unfounded. :laugh:

You probably know the logging company that bought my wood Barge Monkey. They are not too awful far away from you. They are located just west of route 15 in Stuben County, NY. I assume they are still in the pellet business. Maybe a visit would prove fruitful for you in making a decision.

[Ken]

A few years ago when I was younger and even more nieve than I am currently a group approached me to help them get a pellet plant started.  After about 3 years of research, money raising and hard work we were able to produce a marketable product.  Although it was bigger than you are investigating just the thought of making pellets gives me the shivers now.  Long story short making a product that can be sold into the marketplace is a time consuming head scratching venture.  Good luck

[SwampDonkey]

The big outfits here that have survived the pellet business are getting feed stock as a bi-product off their sawmill end. They aren't hauling trash from the woods. They have to do something with the mill waste since a large part of the market for the sawmill chips for pulp has dried up from pulp mills closing. Thus, doing anything at all costs money, even hauling it off, moving it around the site, whatever. Might as well make pellets. Helps to that a lot of their sawmill material is pretty cheap  off public land or industrial forest land for the most part. They aren't competing for it much on the acquisition side, when it gets to that they just close the mill. Seen lots of sawmill closures, some retired some moved on to the next patch.  Basically, you can sell some material to them, but their license on public land secures their supply at cost of production/transport/stumpage. Any profit is theirs, not enough for anyone else except the retail markup. :D

[Crusarius]

Wonder if making particle board would be better option?

[woodmaker]

Bargemonkey,I'm not sure what pellets cost in other areas,but in my general area,they can be bought for around $5.50 for a 40 lb. bag ,retail. Of course,we are only 20 miles from New England Wood Pellet,in Jaffrey. It seems like a lot of work for little money

[Dave Shepard]

Wonder if making particle board would be better option?

What's a particle board plant cost,  $100 million? :D

[Crusarius]

I was thinking small time. a press is only like 150k

[BargeMonkey]

 I looked at the smaller ones I saw for sale, if you could use up the waste and make a small amount, I was wondering if you could do it for 100k, guess not 😂. I don't see a huge demand for pellets, more of a niche but if you've got the raw material why not. There's no "money" in colored mulch down here, most people only buy 2-3yds, the first while I will truck it down from someone in Albany, I've got a pile of "mafia blocks" I'm going to set up for various materials. Biggest question I get is for beach sand, there's a pit north of Amsterdam with white sand, go up with 3-4 trucks this spring and bring 100yd home. We recently bought a place down the road specifically for storing chips, set up the trommel and make topsoil, down the road probably look into a larger horizontal like an M266 type machine.

[quilbilly]

Pellets where I am are around $200 a ton and lots of people have them. Most people that make pellets here are sawmills utilizing softwood waste. No one bids on a job or hauls out pulp just for the pellets. Fir is the most popular around here. I looked into this a little and figured it just wasn't worth it unless the wood was on site and free. Even then it was just barely profitable from what I saw.

[Bruno of NH]

The big softwood mill in town just built a pellet plant
A month ago their 80 x 300 planer mill burned to the ground
I don't think that helps them out,they use the dry shavings in the mix to make the pellets.
I burn pellets have for 13 years I like hardwood pellets from the south the best for my stove.
I would like some type of bio-mass boiler
Barge a guy two towns over makes mulch from waste and sells a lot
Bruno

[Oliver05262]

for Dave Shepard: that plant is still in operation. A big operation with many facets. http://www.greenrenewableinc.com/about-us

[SwampDonkey]

My brother uses pellets and finds the softwood ones have more ash. He prefers hardwood pellets, but will mix some softwood ones in.  Groupe Savoie makes them here in NB, they are a hardwood sawmill.

[Mike_M]

Barge,
          Great minds think a like because I am constantly racking my head on how to utilize our tops and logging slash. Like you, I also looked into both wood pellets and colored mulch but the numbers just don't pencil out. Our main wood is douglas fir and that's what most of our local pellet mills use, but like the others stated it has to be de-barked, dry, and little to no contamination. The colored mulch has always looked good to me, but the capital investment and lack of market knowledge has prevented me from going any further. I realize sometimes to make money you have to take a gamble, but I think logging can be enough of a gamble. Although right now our log prices our very strong. Its a breath of fresh air knowing that others are constantly thinking about how to utilize waste wood, that in our part of the country is mostly piled and burned.

[pinefeller]

ive heard pellets for horse bedding might be the next big thing.....marketing marketing marketing ;D 

[BargeMonkey]

 It's a shame with the waste but from what everyone has said the incentive to do much about it isn't cost effective. At somepoint we are going to buy a decent horizontal grinder, we bought 12acres just down the road and got a "stump dump permit", making it our woodchip / topsoil yard right now, at somepoint outside burning of brush is going to get squashed down here. We have a small trommel screen and mix our topsoil, manure and the finer decomposed woodbark together right now. The cost to get into coloring chips isn't worth the effort here right now.
 I've got 2 outlets for pine pulp right now for shavings, down to 8", doesn't pay much but will keep the woods cleaner. Looking into a bagger for the kindling off the processor, I've got a 12way wedge on a bells 6000 and it does make alot of kindling, sell the bags along with the bundlers this yr, machine will be back inside so the sawdust won't be an issue. 

[mike_belben]

Whatre you getting for topsoil by the yard?

[pinefeller]

the waste in general kills me. im going to try bringing home some of the "pallet" and ''pulp'' grade stuff and just saw it myself. i dont seem to have trouble moving lumber. i dunno about you but it generally makes pretty nice boards as long as its straight. the problem is i cant saw lumber and chop wood. i need an ambitious part timer to take up the slack. 

[BargeMonkey]

 Topsoil all depends on how nice of stuff it is and how much someone is going to take, we supply a couple nurserys with stone / material so volume pricing comes in. For the regular guy your 20-25 a yard for nice stuff thru the trommel. Talks of a big job coming for 25,000 yd of topsoil, our trucks, upgrade to a big trommel if that happens, the one we have is a 20-25yd an hr machine max right now, can't make good topsoil thru a wire deck / harp screen, been down that road 😂
 We saw alot of the low grade into survey stakes, some flooring, the problem is the price of ash is thru the roof down here so bringing home good wood isn't going to happen the next little bit. I've got a market for my sawdust, it's the bark and chips off the processor that I wish I could find a home for, it's not huge volume, less than 3-500yd a yr. "Part time" good help doesn't exist, I've been begging another logger I know from up north come mud season to come saw for us. 

[pinefeller]

skim the processing area with it during mud season then scrape it off the next year and mix it in the topsoil. should be pretty good stuff after being pounded into the dirt for a year plus stabilize the soil. good fill for the low spots. ;D

i have a friend that will be retiring in a year from his current job that seems interested in sawing and trucking. time will tell.