Making pellets out of sawdust... why don't more lumber mill companies do this?

[Ron Wenrich]

When I first started sawing on a manual mill, we had a sawdust pile and a local farmer came and picked it up.  He was using it on dairy cattle.  Problems started up when farmers were getting problems with mastitis.  Penn State did a study on it and found that mastitis was coming from sawdust, and specifically the bark in the sawdust.  Not as much of a problem with debarked logs.

When we went to the automatic mill, we added a debarker.  Dust was sold to dairy farmers, but from debarked logs.  We also sold a lot to horse stables, as well as chicken farmers. 

[SwampDonkey]

boiler fuel = hog fuel

[PoginyHill]

Hog is a generic term for any piece of machinery that reduces raw wood waste into conveyable chips for a boiler. Hammer mill, hammer hog, chipper etc...

[moodnacreek]

SD,

  What is hog fuel? Oink - Oink?

Wood scraps run through a 'hog' so they can be conveyed into a boiler [burned]. If memory serves it would be chips.

[Brian_Rhoad]

A chipper and a hog are different animals. A chipper cuts with knives. A hog shreds with hammers.

[Evgenii.B]

Firstly, the ability to sell pellets depends on their quality. High-quality wood pellets should have a calorific value of no less than 17,000 BTU, ash content not exceeding 0.7%, and moisture content below 10%. Bulk density should fall within the range of 38 to 46 lb/ft3. With sufficient equipment, high-quality pellets can be produced from various wood sources. However, the more technological processes involved, the more expensive the pellet plant. In other words, the more complex the production process, the higher the productivity required, which means a larger quantity of raw materials. It may be profitable to produce pellets from dry sawdust in one location, while processing wet trimmings may not be cost-effective elsewhere.

Secondly, the ability to sell pellets depends on the proximity to the consumer. Sellers and distributors of pellets purchase them from different plants and organize logistics based on consumer demand. If there is no major plant nearby but there are consumers, they may buy pellets from you at a higher price and save on delivery. Just give the sellers a call and ask them how much they'd pay for your pellets in your city.

Thirdly, there are large aggregators that collect small batches of products into larger ones and ship them by sea to Europe. With sufficient pellet quality and acceptable delivery costs to the coast, this can be a good method for year-round sales.

[booman]

I have acreage so I drizzle it over the land from a front end loader bucket.  Pellet companies I am told want 18 wheel truck loads of saw dust.  It would take me a while to generate that much.

[SawyerTed]

There's warehouses full of pallets of bagged pellets not far from me.

Surplus pellets are selling for $4 per bag with a 20 bag minimum and $125/ton with a 24 ton minimum ($2.50 per bag).

Competing with that is like trying to compete with Weyerhaeuser or Georgia Pacific making 2x4 suds.  

[K-Guy]

We had $7-8/bag this winter depending on brand and vendor. I would've lined up at $4/bag.

[SwampDonkey]

You'll never see $4 a bag for pellets up here. It's close to $7. I'm guessing bulk delivery into a hopper is the cheapest, a lot less to handle. Only place I here them advertise bulk delivery is in northern Maine. Those are coming from NB, from the mill across the river.

[SawyerTed]

Warehouse with bags of pellets 50 miles from here.  

[PoginyHill]

With crude oil and natural gas prices rather reasonable for the last several years, it has kept pellet (and firewood) prices suppressed as well. With crude approaching $90/barrel, maybe that'll change.

[Southside]

Pellets have their niche, but they will never compete at scale with oil or gas unless there is a complete society shift.  We have gotten to a place where people don't get up off the couch to turn the lights on, they have a robot mow their lawn, and some are trying to make it so you don't even have to drive your own vehicle.  You really think folks are going to lug bags of pellets home, store them somewhere, drag them inside, put them into a hopper, etc en mass?  As far as bulk goes - that works with oil because of a hose and the ability to reach the tank rather easily.  That is a very limited opportunity with a solid fuel like pellets. The vast majority of folks will complain about higher oil and gas cost, but they will pay the bill before the lifted $100K mall crawler ever hauls home a pallet of pellets. 

[Hilltop366]

I burn some pellets in a pellet boiler in an apartment building to reduce the oil bill when the prices line up, I'll be at about 700 bags this heating season at 40 pounds per bag. Best I could come up with locally is $7 per bag this year, $4 would be nice.

[SwampDonkey]

Also the prices on fuel oil, propane and natural gas is a lot cheaper in the US than in Canada or elsewhere. I haven't heated with oil in 20 years. In fact in my local area, wood in some form, firewood or pellets, is the overwhelming majority of heat. Mom's cousin in the city of Toronto burns wood they get for cheap from the city parks department when they remove trees. The city has a staging area where people get the firewood from, from my understanding.

I don't see anyone in these parts buying into that tech stuff. Rural folks here want easy, reliable. If you're up in years, then you certainly like push button convenience. If you can afford it, go for it. The cities are full of conveniences because where you live is the deciding factor. If you're in an apartment, you're likely using push button heat.

I know someone who suggested if they were building a shop they would install a heat pump. I said, I like wood too much.

[SawyerTed]

Transportation of commodities like pellets is the big ticket item.  Sometimes transportation costs more than the wholesale price of the commodity.  

That $125 surplus ton of pellets in a Virginia warehouse becomes a $325 ton of pellets once it's trucked to a high demand area.  

[SwampDonkey]

They send boat loads of pellets to Europe for electrical generation and heating. When they first started there was not enough manufacturing for the domestic market, now that has caught up. There was a time when you could not feed the demand, people with pellet stoves were virtually stranded and quite rightly pithed off that pellets could be sent oversees but not look after their own.  You couldn't buy any, period, didn't matter what the price was.   The EU consumes as much as everyone else combined.

[Evgenii.B]

You'll never see $4 a bag for pellets up here. It's close to $7.

The cost per ton of wood pellet production includes $10 for consumables, 100 kWh of electricity, and the workers' wages. Considering the smallest pellet plant capable of producing high-quality fuel pellets, it can produce 0.5 tons per hour. Taking into account the wage, the cost of one ton of pellets sums up to $20 for electricity and consumables, and $60 for 2 hours of labor, totaling $80 per ton. This makes sense if the sawdust is automatically delivered from the warehouse and there is no additional cost for transportation. The automated packaging machine, which packs pellets into 50-pound bags, adds an additional $15 per ton in expenses. Therefore, the cost of one ton of pellets with bag packaging approaches $100 when the pellet plant is located directly near the waste source. This is $2.3 per bag. I have attached a photo of what such a pellet plant looks like. With increased productivity, the salary expenses are significantly reduced.

The delivery and refilling of pellet containers is similar to liquid fuel. Pellets are blown into the containers with compressed air, and organizing their storage is no more difficult than for regular grain.

[Southside]

I don't see anyone in these parts buying into that tech stuff. Rural folks here want easy,

SD - you need to realize we on this page are the odd balls, and we are becoming dinosaurs.  Look around at the average age.  It's no different than farming, the number of people involved in it becomes less and less each year and the age goes up. I am talking in terms of commodities, not systems used by folks who can saw their own firewood, lumber, or grow their own beef.  Skill sets we take for granted are lacking in the vast majority of the population along with the ability to have any self sufficiency.  I deal with a lot of urban and suburban folks as customers and see it all the time.  I am talking about adults who don't know how to put air into a tire....

[SwampDonkey]

I'm too far away from any major center to see it here. 1/2 of the population in NB is rural. Cities here are not very big. You can travel for miles and there is sparseness everywhere, then boom you're at the city gates. There's no hundreds of miles of built up housing in suburbs. You have little developments, now and again. Travel 5 miles from the center of any city here and you're in undeveloped wilderness or old farms. The further from the river banks, the fewer and almost nonexistent housing. Where I live will never be anything more than potato fields and woods. In time it will likely be less fields since we've lost half of the farmland now. It will be woods growing back up as it has the last 150 years. The little increase in population in recent years is mostly ingress from other provinces, mostly retired or nearly so. A lot buying old 100+ year old houses. Very few new homes.

My carpenter told me he is working on a timber frame starting in June. It's $600,000 kit coming from Alberta and some parts of it south of the border from Alberta. That's another transplant moving east. It reminds me of a lot of mansions of money people in the US, many abandoned and falling down after the folks pass on. People video it all the time. It's certainly happened here to. Peirre Burton's estate is pretty much abandoned. He was a famous Canadian author. I wouldn't say his place was huge, but some people think their legacy will be carried on when they die. It doesn't, it fizzles and fades and is forgotten.

[beenthere]

Evgenii.B

Where are you located? USA, Canada, UK ??

Interesting how using copy and paste, the color and font changes in the post. ??

The video shown reminds me of back in the 50's when we used coal delivered, then scooped it into the stoker bin to be auger-fed into the furnace upon heat demand. Those were the days. For the coal dust problem, seems they sprayed the coal with oil.

Pellets are a convenient wood heat that way too (auger-fed), and one of few prime reasons for their being a thing (reality) for heat.
Not for the manufacturing, transportation, delivery, dependence, storage (keeping dry), quality, etc. that come with using pellets for heat. (IMO)

[Ron Wenrich]

Is that $7 the Canadian price or US price.  If Canadian, that would translate to about $5.11 US.

Using a wood pellets vs fuel oil calculator, and considering an 83% for both boilers, you end up with 1 gal of fuel oil = 16.4 pounds of pellets.  One ton pellets = 123 gal fuel oil.  A 50 pound bag would be 3 gal of fuel oil.  It sure sounds cost efficient for pellets if you disregard the added labor and storage needed.

My grandfather had a boiler that used rice coal.  He had a long auger that feed it and once a week he went into the basement and shoveled coal into the auger.  It also heated his hot water for 3 housing units.  I imagine the same could be used for pellets.

[Hilltop366]

$7 per bag Canadian, our furnace oil is around $6 Canadian per US gal.

I plumbed the pellet boiler into the oil boiler return line to pre-heat the return water. 

The pellet boiler is not big enough to take all of the load all of the time so I still use some oil during peak usage of heat or hot water. It reduces the oil usage by at least 2/3 during the winter and more during the shoulder seasons.

The pellet boiler has a small 4 bag hopper and a second 35 bag hopper with automatic auger that feeds the smaller hopper. I check it and add a few bags every 2 or 3 days or any day I'm there. It is close by so I'm there often.

[moodnacreek]

I don't see anyone in these parts buying into that tech stuff. Rural folks here want easy,

SD - you need to realize we on this page are the odd balls, and we are becoming dinosaurs.  Look around at the average age.  It's no different than farming, the number of people involved in it becomes less and less each year and the age goes up. I am talking in terms of commodities, not systems used by folks who can saw their own firewood, lumber, or grow their own beef.  Skill sets we take for granted are lacking in the vast majority of the population along with the ability to have any self sufficiency.  I deal with a lot of urban and suburban folks as customers and see it all the time.  I am talking about adults who don't know how to put air into a tire....

You know they make run flat tires these days 

[Evgenii.B]

Where are you located? USA, Canada, UK ??

I'm worried mentioning the country will get me banned. I'm planning to live and work in Colorado. I've been studying American culture for over a year now, and I like one-story America more and more. I've been interacting with local Americans from different states, and I've long realized the falsehood of my country's propaganda. Soon, the US will gain a specialist in wood waste recycling and natural fertilizer production.

To use pellets in other furnaces, it's enough to integrate a burner into the stove door. Many people are converting wood and coal stoves here. It should be noted that a pellet burner requires significantly greater draft in the stove. Sometimes, installing a pellet burner requires extending the chimney above the roof or increasing its diameter. I suspect that in the US, laws are much stricter, and most likely, such modifications would need to be carried out by licensed professionals.