Fuel pellets

Fuel pellets – are small granules of a cylindrical shape, with a diameter of 5 to 9 mm. Fuel pellets are produced mainly from woodworking industry waste, such as shavings, bark, wood chips, etc. Also, fuel pellets can be made of agricultural raw materials, such as straw, sunflower husks, buckwheat, etc.

Pellets are widely used in Western European countries, where they have long been successfully used for heating country houses and cottages, as well as in small boiler houses in agricultural areas, where there is a regular influx of raw materials for their production. In addition, fuel pellets have gained their popularity due to the solid fuel boilers with automatic fuel supply that have entered the market, which have become a good alternative to gas boilers. If not so long ago, solid fuel boilers were abandoned due to the need to regularly, manually throw firewood or coal into the furnace, then in new solid fuel boilers, fuel pellets and granules are poured into a special tank and automatically fed into the boiler as they burn, without human intervention in this process.

In Ukraine, fuel pellets have gained popularity not so long ago. In particular, one of the main factors that contributed to this was the regular increase in the price of natural gas, as well as high efficiency and heat transfer. It is for this reason that very often when designing a heating system in a private house, two boilers are immediately installed in the boiler room – gas and solid fuel. In the event that in the area in which the house of non-gasifiers will be built, then there are practically no alternatives to a solid fuel boiler. Of course, there are various electrical appliances for space heating, such as underfloor heating, electric boilers, infrared and oil heaters, the cost of heating with such heaters is significantly higher than the cost of gas or pellets. The use of solar collectors also cannot always solve the problems – after all, in this case, much depends on the weather. Thus, a real solution to the heating problem can be solid fuel: coal, briquettes, pellets.

What should you pay attention to when buying pellets?

Fuel pellets and granules have a low moisture content, which makes them 1.5-2 times more economical than conventional firewood, while pellets for boilers have a low ash content. As mentioned earlier, for the production of   fuel pellets take waste from wood or agricultural production: dust, chips, sawdust, trimmings, husks, scrap – in general, any raw material containing lignin. And here lies the main one.

Currently, if pellets are made from wood waste, then most often they use not quite high-quality raw materials – bark and wood dust. Fuel pellets made from such raw materials have significantly worse characteristics than pellets made from sawdust. In addition, much depends on the wood itself. So in Ukraine, sawdust of coniferous wood species is most often used, in comparison with which hardwood species significantly benefit in quality. How not to make a mistake with the choice of fuel pellets?

Fuel pellets from coal dust.

Our company produces fuel pellets from coal dust and grade D coal. Coal fuel pellets are used both for traditional boilers and as fuel for automatic boilers. At the same time, coal fuel pellets not only retain all the positive properties of the source material - coal, but also add new ones. In particular, the ecological cleanliness of pellets is maintained through the use of only natural (natural) binders in the briquetting process. When burned, fuel pellets do not emit carbon monoxide and other compounds harmful to human health, which are often present in traditional fuel pellets made from wood derivatives. In addition, when burning pellets, little is formed & nbsp; ash and no unpleasant smell. For the production of fuel pellets, we use grade D coal with a low content of ash (about 6%) and sulfur (0.6%). Coal fuel pellets have a high calorific value of 5500-7100 kcal/kg. Due to the compaction of the source material by more than 2 times. But the most important indicator of coal pellets for solid fuel boilers is a longer burning time and, accordingly, a greater heat transfer for the same volume of fuel burned compared to charcoal or wood pellets.