How to Choose High Quality Wood Pellets

Something about wood pellets

Wood pellet, also called biomass pellet fuel, mainly made through the processing of pine wood, poplar wood, birch wood, fir wood, fruit wood and other crop stalks, is widely used for burning, BBQ fuel, home cooking and heating, fireplace heating and industrial boiler, with high combustion efficiency of over 80%. Wood pellet can be produced with different diameters ranging from 4mm to 8mm and length deciding by your requirement.
Wood pellets have lots of advantages, becoming the best substitute to traditional fossil fuels.

• High heat. Wood pellet has a high calorific value with 3900~4800 kcal/kg, and the calorific value can reach 7000—8000 kcal/kg after carbonization.
• High purity. Wood pellets are made without other matters which can not produce calorific value.
• Clean and green. Without corrosion fixed inside, wood pellet do not produce sulfur dioxide and phosphorus pentoxide after burning and other harmful gas to the air, friendly to the environment.
• Sustainable. Wood pellet is made from biomass materials which are renewable energy sources given by the nature.
• Easy. With uniform size and low moisture content, wood pellets are easy to store and transport.

 

What is high quality wood pellets?

Although wood pellets have much advantages, it is fact that there exists bad quality wood pellets, so, what kind of wood pellet is the high quality wood pellet? Here is the tips.

• Consistent wood pellet size
• Smooth and bright surface
• Low moisture content
• Low dust and ash content
• No additives
• High ash melting temperature
• High heat output

 Want to make wood pellets by yourself? Use wood pellet making machine.

Choosing high quality wood pellets for your use

After knowing the standard of high quality wood pellet, it is time to choose high quality wood pellets. But it is not easy to choose high quality wood pellet when you have no professional tools. Don’t worry, we can offer you the methods.

Step 1 Looking

First impression is very important which is also suitable for checking wood pellet quality. From looking the appearance of them, you can judge quality of wood pellets. The first thing to look is the length. There may be no big difference between two close length like 20mm and 25 mm, but for the wood pellets in bulk or bags, the length matters, big difference of length is affecting the performance of wood pellet. Another thing is the dust and fines content. When you take the wood pellets out of the bags, you will find fines. Fines exist in any quality of wood pellets which are very tiny fines. When the dust and fines content is over than 1% that means the weak pressing force caused the dust and fines.

Step 2 Touching

When you touching the wood pellets with your hand, if you feel the surface is smooth and shinning with no cracks on the surface that means it is good quality. The wood pellet with cracks on the surface when you feel is usually caused by improper pressing ratio and moisture content of raw material.

Step 3 Smelling

Wood pellet is made through seal space with high temperature, the lignin in the biomass material react to be mingled with other matters of biomass material, so, the smell of high quality wood pellet is the furnace of fresh wood. If the smell is bad, the wood pellet is surely made by impure raw material.

Step 4 Watering

Put several wood pellets in a cup of water and wait for minutes. The wood pellet dissolves and expands in short time means good quality. On the contrary, bad wood pellet dissolves and expands slowly with internal bond and becomes hard.

Step 5 Burning

Burning is the last destination of wood pellet. So, it is an ultimate method for checking quality. Wood pellet with good quality burns with brown or bright light color of flame, wood pellet burning with dark color of flame is not good. After burning out, check the ash, little ash stands for good quality wood pellets.

Additional tips:
If you don’t like to check the wood pellet quality, you can also make wood pellet through an equipment called pellet mill by yourself. Choosing a reliable pellet mill and talk your requirement to the salesman, they can give you the reasonable suggestions.
 
If you have interested in making wood pellet by our self, please contact us.