[Bioconversion] RE: [Stoves] Grass Pellets

[Tom Miles]

At Andrew's suggestion let's migrate this to bioconversion. It's really more
germane to developed economies but may be of interest to this list as well. 

Production of grass pellets.

Specific power consumption for fuel pellets is about 50 kWh/ton plus straw
preparation and processing which absorbs another 50 kWh/ton. Power, labor
and extrusion die wear are usually the main costs. A 250 Hp pellet mill will
produce about 4 tph in straw pellets, 5 tph in wood pellets and up to 7 tph
in recycled paper pellets.  

REAP Canada has done quite a bit of work on switchgrass pellets. So Roger
Samson can give us a clue about production. Their papers can be found on the
REAP website. The REAP reports show both production and burning equipment. 
http://www.reap-canada.com/bio_and_climate_3_2.htm
http://www.reap-canada.com/library.htm 

Joe King and Richard Nelson at Kansas State University have also studied
switchgrass pellets. 
http://www.engext.ksu.edu/biomass/_Background.htm

Iowa State University has reported on switchgrass pellets. There is a small
pellet mill in Southern Iowa that makes them. 
http://www.agmrc.org/agmrc/commodity/biomass/switchgrass/switchgrassprofile.
htm

That mill and the Chriton Valley Biomass Project ( http://biomass.ecria.com/
)got a lot of attention this week after President Bush mentioned switchgrass
in his State of the Union message. If you saw ABC World News Tonight on
Wednesday you saw about 10 seconds of our fields and equipment.  

Here in Oregon we pelletize seed cleaning from our grass seed production.
Since they are already sized they are pretty easy to pelletize. But the
outer plant parts have high concentrations of nutrients which cause slagging
in the hot firebox. So they have only been used in local pellet stoves in
combination (50:50) with wood pellets. I don't know of anyone who is using
them on a regular basis as fuel these days. Not many feed pellet mills are
set up for whole straw in our area. One that was closed his doors when he
retired some years ago. His pellets sold at prices competitive with grass
hay which has about the same (low) nutritional value.


Tom



  




-----Original Message-----
From: stoves-bounces at listserv.repp.org
[mailto:stoves-bounces at listserv.repp.org] On Behalf Of Clinton M
Sent: Friday, February 03, 2006 1:45 PM
To: stoves at listserv.repp.org
Subject: [Stoves] Grass Pellets

Hello,
   I am interested in information regarding pelletized grass for heating.
Does ths list support that topic?

1)  Production of grass pellets
2)  Burning of grass pellets
3)  equipment needed to do both.

Am also interested in using surplus grain in grain-stoves too.

Any problem with these topics?

Regards,
Clinton Meyer
Wells, MN USA
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