Wood pelleting machine is usually called wood pellet mill or pellet press which is used to compress various biomass materials into solid wood pellets, in another word, the core principle of a wood pelleting machine is used to reduce the volume of a raw material and increase the materials specific gravity and density. But there are different types of pelleting machines, some are designed to produce feed pellets for animals, some are made to produce wood pellets for home heating. You should choose different types of wood pelleting machines for your own need. With the development of society and economy, using wood pellets for fuel has becoming a fashionable trend in today’s world, so has making pellets at home. If you want to make pellets just for residential use, a small pellet mill will be quite enough for you.

Pelleting Process

From kinds of biomass raw materials to solid pellets needs a process, that is called pelleting process. Generally speaking, there are five main steps you should follow: size reduction, drying, pelleting, cooling and bagging.

Size Reduction

There are two situations, If the raw material is much too big, it needs to be chipped or crushed first to a small size in order to fit into the dies. When the thickness is larger than 10mm or the size is over 50 * 50mm, a wood chipper is needed to cut these large materials into small pieces, then a hammer mill will crush these small pieces into wood powder with diameter less than 3mm. but if raw materials is just as small as sawdust powder, it could be directly jump to the second step.

Drying

Before making pellets the material must be dried. Drying the material to the proper moisture content is critical in making quality pellets. The favorite pelletizing moisture content is about 13%-15%, however, most raw materials have the moisture content about 50%.

Pelleting

The wood pelleting machine is the crucial equipment in the complete pelleting process. But you must avoid impurities like metal or stone in the raw materials which will damage die and rollers.

Cooling

When the finished pellets leave pelleting machine, they will always be hot and usually have high moisture content, therefore they will need to be cooled and dried. The most common way is to spread them out and let them cool and dry naturally. Sometimes air is circulated through them with blowers or fans. If you think above methods are too slow, you can use a cooler to help you cooling these pellets. Keep in mind that please don’t dry them too quickly or they could easily be cracked.

Bagging

Last but most importantly, don’t forget to bag them properly as you can’t use them up just at one time. Pellets must be stored to protect them from absorbing moisture. If the pellet absorbs moisture they will expand and become useless, in that case, it will be a great waste of money and your precious time. Pellets are usually put into plastic bags and sealed. Bags for most consumers are a size that can be easily carried. Large sacks weighing up to a ton are also used for large scale equipment. Pellet tankers can be used for bulk shipment to consumers with large pellet silos.