Pellet fuel

Biofuels made from compressed organic matter or biomass are known as pellet fuels (or pellets). Any one of the five main types of biomass—industrial waste and co-products, food waste, agricultural leftovers, energy crops, and untreated lumber—can be converted into pellets. The most popular kind of pellet fuel is wood, which is typically produced from compacted sawdust and other industrial wastes left over from building, furniture manufacturing, and timber milling. Empty fruit bunches, palm kernel shells, coconut shells, and tree tops and branches thrown during logging operations are some additional types of industrial trash. In order to be used in currently operating coal-fired power plants, so-called "black pellets" were manufactured from biomass and polished to resemble hard coal.  The heating value, moisture and ash content, and size of pellets are used to classify them. They can be used as fuels for producing electricity, cooking, and heating in homes or businesses. Due to their high density and low moisture content (below 10%), pellets can be made and burned with a very high combustion efficiency.

Additionally, their precise calibration is made possible by the regular geometry and small size of the particles. Both auger feeding and pneumatic conveying are options for feeding them to a burner. Their great density also enables convenient long-distance transit and storage. They can easily be blown from a tanker to a silo or storage bunker on a customer's property.

Since the middle of the 1980s, a wide variety of pellet stoves, central heating furnaces, and other heating appliances have been created and sold. In Austria, fully automatic wood pellet heaters with a comfort level comparable to that of oil and gas boilers were first made available in 1997. The demand for pellet heating has grown across Europe and North America as a result of the rise in fossil fuel prices since 2005, and a large industry is beginning to take shape. The International Energy Agency Task 40 estimates that the output of wood pellets increased by more than twofold to over 14 million tons between 2006 and 2010. The Biomass Energy Resource Center predicts that in the following five years, wood pellet production in North America will quadruple once more in a report from 2012.