Which Type Of Grass Is Suitable For Grass Fuel Pellets?

Beside wood pellets the next most common reference of a pellet fuel is grass pellets. Where wood pellets is a general term for the type of wood used, grass pellets is even more general.

There is a huge difference between the type of grass that should and which should not be used for fuel pellets. For instance there are some videos on the internet of home owners using small Chinese pellet mills to produce grass pellets. These grass pellets are made from lawn clippings. To some this may seem like an excellent idea, using a waste product that almost everyone produces. A general rule which you can use to tell if a biomass material is a good potential fuel is how green it is. The greener a biomass material the more chloride it will produce during combustion. Chloride is a high temperature corrosive, and lawn clipping are full of it. Therefore while yes you can easily pellet lawn clippings and they will burn, unless you want to be buying another pellet stove in 5 years, I wouldn't bother. Reed canary grass is a good biomass for fuel pellets. However is also goes through a process of winter washing when the grass has died, and then after this process it is harvested and collected. This means the chloride level is at an absolute minimum. Even with reed canary grass though there is some chloride and ash content can be an issue. Hemp is generally the best biomass material for the production of fuel pellets. An advantage with grass pellets over wood pellets is it takes the pellet mill less energy to compress the material through the die. To learn more about the process, click below. You will see a range of videos of our small grass pellet maker. We also have a video of a recent pellet plant installation in the Ukraine which is been used to process reeds into fuel pellets for local power plants.