Making Cardboard Pellets In The Pellet Mill

Wood is not the be all and end all of pellets. Practically any material which is organically based and some materials which are not can be compressed into pellets. While using the waste from timber production for wood pellets is a valid approach we should also look to what materials we currently waste. Cardboard is good example of a material we frequently waste and we should make better use of. you may think that most cardboard is just recycled into more cardboard. How much is still sent to landfill and the UK for instance sends its cardboard to China for recycling which just seems mad. Local cardboard waste could be processed locally in a pellet mill to produce fuel pellets. However there are a few issues to cover on using cardboard in the pellet mill.

The first issues is size reduction ready for the pellet mill. Running cardboard through a hammer mill makes a light fluffy material due to the static charge of the hammer mill. This material it very difficult to feed into the pellet mill. Therefore suitable shredders need to be used to reduce the cardboard to size without disrupting the fibres to much. The issues of staples also needs to be addressed. Any metal in the pellet mill can cause damage. Now the very small thin staples should be removed, however the real damager can come from the heavy duty staples used on large cardboard packaging. It is probably recommend that all material passes over a magnet before it enters the pellet mill. Cardboard can actually produce some very high density pellets, and this will burn cleanly producing very little if any visible smoke. However the ash content of these pellets should be noted, as it will be considerably higher than most wood pellets. Only certain pellet burners will be able to use the pellets.