Can you make pellet stove pellets from sawdust?

[Ben Grunow]

Anyone know what the process is for making these? Ingredients, pressures, glue involved etc?

I have a lot of sawdust and would buy a press even if it were $1000 or so as the cost of heat is rediculous.

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

braziliions of Tonnes of pressure and a binder prolly corn starch

Saw dust is selling for $100 a ton.

[Russ Filtz]

Paraphrased joke.

White House Staffer - "Mr. President, I was just notified that two Brazilian peacekeepers were killed in Iraq".

President Bush's face goes pale.

President Bush - "My god that's horrible!.... How many is a Brazilian?"

[Rob Stanhope]

but that could be true

[Tony Joyce]

to your $1,000 and you can get started making pellets.

[Dennis Peacock]

You mean to tell me that you can't make sawdust into a fire form of fuel for under $100K????

[Pat Germain]

The primary power plant in my town typically runs on coal dust. The coal is ground up and the dust is blown into a furnace where it burns very quickly and very hot.

A few years ago, the power plant was experimenting with using sawdust instead of coal dust. I haven't heard how that turned out, but it suggests you don't have to use pellets to burn sawdust. Of course, burning the dust may require millions of dollars worth of hardware.

I know those stupid fireplace logs you can buy at hardware stores are just sawdust, wax and some metal to look pretty. I wouldn't think it would be too hard to make a fireplace log with some sawdust. Hmmmm...

[Jim Myers]

Do a web search on Pellet Mills.

They make some of them that are small batch units that compress the dust into the pellets required for the stoves that cost WAY under $100K

I think I saw one on the auction site for around $1k but there are some cheaper than that.

[Scott Loven]

http://www.pelletpros.com/id68.html

[mark page]

I don't know about the pellet issue. But my father heated his commercial shop with wood. He had several very large wood burning stoves, and one made from a 300 gal steel steam tank. I swept the wood storage room and loaded it with sawdust. I ended up heating that stove to cherry red and warped both sides. I do know that sawdust burns very hot after that incident.

[Ben Grunow]

Scott got it. For around $2500 you can make 110 lbs of pellets an hour.

Anyone heat with pellets? What rate are you using them and what do they cost? (how long before you save $2500?)

I would think the average person could get lots of free sawdust if he just asked around town. This is starting to look interesting.

[Bryan Berguson]

Do a google search on "Wood Gun". It won't make pellets but they look to be one of the best heating solutions made.

BB

[Scott Loven]

Scott got it. For around $2500 you can make 110 lbs of pellets an hour.

Anyone heat with pellets? What rate are you using them and what do they cost? (how long before you save $2500?)

I would think the average person could get lots of free sawdust if he just asked around town. This is starting to look interesting.
You could form a small CO-OP with neighbors or friends and spread the cost around, 5 people, $500 each?

[Terry Achey]

:)I heat with pellets in my hsop. I go thru about 3,000 lbs. of pellets running constantly between 50 to 65 degrees (depends if I'm working in the shop or not). Well insulated - 6" walls and ceilings and 750 s.f. w/9ft. ceiling.

Last season price was around $0.12 / lb. buying bulk for quality hardwood low-ash (less than 1%) pellets. I spent about $360 for the entire PA winter.

Quality pellets is imperative to maximizing heat output and cleaning. 3,000 lbs. of pellets resulted in about 1.5 gallons of ash total! Now that's clean burning.

$2,500 can buy over 10 tons of quality pellets. Buy the way... at one time or another I've heated my house entirely with firewood; entirely with coal; and now a shop with pellets. The pellets are by far the most carefree heating I've ever done. Another key is having a qualtiy automatic controls stove (self start; room t-stat; auto fan; etc.)

Here's the info - you do the math. Good luck.:)

Terry

[Paul Downes]

I looked into the idea a while back. At the time most of the machines were starting at around 100K. as noted. They get the sawdust in a wet slurey and then run it through a heated extrusion press. A friend of mine heats his home with sawdust. He has a sawdust furnace and burns about a cubic yrd per day. He also happens to own a moulding factory. I briefly thought about designing a small unit with the small factory/shop in mind. I am a diemaker by trade and it is sort of up my alley. But I just don't have the time nor the drive to do the research. I have been asked to design and build a used tire shreader with the same end in mind. You can actually burn tires at high temps and not produce that much pollution. But again it is something I just don't have time to do........

[Steve Clardy]

WoodMizer makes a sawdust burning stove.

I haven't checked into it yet.

Nuther one of them...when I get time.

[David DeCristoforo]

When I lived in Oregon, lots of the older houses had sawdust burning furnaces. Not a lot of info on the web (at least not that I could find, but here's a few links...

http://www.hernironworks.com/conifer.html
http://www.stiltman.com/html/energy_from_waste.htm
http://studionebula.com/blog/2007/08/31/my-familys-sawdust-furnace
http://www.kynd.com/~graydg/sawdustburner.htm#burnerp

And a site with small "pellet mills"
http://www.pelletpros.com/

[Michael Wetzel]

I paid $185/ton for the early bird special this year. You had to pick them up by may 25th.

[Mitchell Andrus]

Anyone know what the process is for making these? Ingredients, pressures, glue involved etc?

I have a lot of sawdust and would buy a press even if it were $1000 or so as the cost of heat is rediculous.

Pressure and a binder sqeezes the air out. Too much air, too hot the combustion and the heat goes up the chimney. You want smolder, not flames.

I heated a shop many many years ago with coal. Shovel fed. Had to stock up a fire in the am, tend to it 2 or 3 times during the day and set it up just right so it was still going in the am again - 365/7. Never again. I didn't save enough money to put up with the PITA factor.

Maybe pellets and an automatic system would be OK.... IF you didn't run out of the raw materials. If you go back to buying and handling the raw materials you may not save as much as you think.

Do lots of math.... BTU's per pound, # of pounds you can make/store, cost of the binder, footprint of the operation, what to do with the ashes, life expectancy/maint costs of the heating unit,... etc.


I see that a small mill costs $3,000.00 and makes 100 to 200 pounds per hour. How much sawdust do you make????

A brochure on the site below indicates 7.85 TONS of wood pellets to heat a 2,000 sf home. Jeeez!

http://www.woodmasterplus.com/products-afs-900.php