What are Wood Pellets?
Wood pellets are pellets made from various types of wood and its waste, intended for use as fuel. Compared to other types of fossil fuels, wood pellets have a lot of advantages, the main of which are the high environmental friendliness and renewability of this type of natural resource. In addition, substandard wood or generally waste obtained during woodworking is used for the manufacture of pellets, which ultimately reduces the amount of this waste and reduces environmental pollution. Wooden pellets https://forest-goods.com/products/pellets are mainly used as fuel for various heating devices - heating boilers and barbecues, fireplaces and power units of power plants. The scope of wooden pellets is very wide and is not limited to the fuel and energy sector. But we can say with confidence that wood pellets are one of the best types of fuel for conventional and automatic heating boilers.
Wood Pellets - a Renewable Resource
Wood pellets have a great advantage compared to other types of fuels of natural origin. The most commonly used fossil fuels today are natural gas and coal, but they have one big drawback - the reserves of gas and coal in nature are limited, and it can take millions of years to renew them. In addition, hard coal as a fuel is beginning to be phased out around the world due to the high levels of pollution caused by burning this type of fuel. Natural gas is more environmentally friendly than coal, but still its reserves in the world are limited, and sooner or later, this fuel will also have to be abandoned or its use limited. Wooden pellets are devoid of all these shortcomings - trees grow quite quickly, there will always be waste from the woodworking industry, and when burning pellets, the maximum amount of heat and the minimum amount of harmful substances are released. In addition, the demand for wood pellets is stimulated by rising prices for classic types of fossil fuels - oil, gas, natural coal.
Main Parameters of Wood Pellets
The main parameters of wood pellets are their moisture content, ash content, density and, of course, the amount of heat released during their combustion. Pellets have low moisture and high density, the moisture content of wood pellets is 7-12%, and the density of pellets exceeds the density of wood in the form of densely stacked firewood by about one and a half times. The ash content in pellets ranges from 1 to 3%, which is much less than ash from conventional firewood. In terms of heat release, wooden pellets are one and a half times superior to firewood and only two times inferior to coal, and almost three times to natural gas, which is a fairly high indicator for the use of this type of fossil fuel. Another parameter of wooden pellets is usually regulated - their size. Pellets with a diameter of 5-10 mm are usually made for domestic consumers, while for use in industrial boilers or power plants, wooden pellets are made in much larger sizes.
Pellets or Firewood?
It would seem that if wooden pellets are made of the same material as ordinary firewood, why reinvent the wheel? But not everything is as simple as it seems at first glance. Compared to firewood, pellets have a lot of advantages - they take up much less space than firewood, when burning wood pellets, more heat is released and less ash remains, when using pellets, the fuel supply process can be automated and precisely regulated. But most importantly, high-quality firewood is usually made from fairly high-quality wood that could be used for other purposes, and wood pellets are made from woodworking waste. So no matter which way you look at it - wood pellets benefit in many ways compared to ordinary firewood.