What Are The Results From Using Biomass Fuel Straw?

The pellet fuel market is currently dominated by the use of wood pellets, however the biomass fuel pellet market is growing, highlighting the potential of many other biomass materials.

One of those materials is straw. Straw is a by-product from food production, such as wheat and barley. There are some uses for this straw for instance animal bedding, however there is a large amount of straw that is still seen as waste. For instance in some countries straw is still burnt in open fields, creating huge emissions, however this practice is now banned through Europe and the US. Straw has been used for fuel in systems such as large bale burners. However these systems are not very efficient and are not possible on a small scale. However, one way straw can be used on a small scale is to compress the straw into pellets. To see an example of a pellet burner using straw pellets, please see below. At PelHeat, we help to educate people on how to make pellets and the equipment used. Before pellets can be produced in the pellet mill, the moisture has to be around 15%. Now one of the advantages of straw is that the moisture content is generally suitable at harvest. Therefore as long as the straw can be stored before production, drying is not required. Size reduction is required before the pellet mill, and this is generally carried out via a hammer mill, and to reduce the material for a hammer mill a bale shredder is good choice. Productivity in the pellet mill can be fairly high when making straw pellets, as it is a fairly low density material. However an additional binding agent maybe required. A typical example would be corn starch. Through the link below you can see a video of our small mini pellet mill which was designed for research purposes and is now used by several universities for pellet production trials.