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The last decade has seen biomass pellets emerge as a serious contributor to the heating fuels market, particularly in Europe plus the US. Sweden was the first country to really move forward by means of biomass pellets in a major way. The government put serious investment into establishing biomass pellet plants around the country taking advantage of the huge volumes of sawdust from one of the major industry in Sweden, timber processing. From Sweden’s case, extra European countries followed, along by way of the US. The true benefits of pellet plants to bring economic development are still not fully realised, as smaller more localized plants create more economic sense. As wood pellet fuel is now reaching a wide enough appeal, more small scale pellet plants will be set-up to meet local market demand. One of the biggest obstacles to efficient pellet production while maintaining a profit margin is transport, both in the sense of raw matter in addition to the finished product. More localized small scale pellet plants can help generate local jobs as well as cheap energy.

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The reason shipping plays such a crucial role in pellet fuel production as it effects the costs of construction, probable profits as well as also the credibility of pellet fuel as a green fuel. Because of fuels such as bio-ethanol plus bio-diesel are now used, most haulage still relies on standard, along with expensive gasoline. The high price of this energy means transport costs can be very high. Therefore having large pellet plants which have to have large quantities of raw matter transported to the plant is very costly. Large pellet plants as biomass pellet energy is still a relatively small market, then have to search further a field to find customers. To then haulage the finished pellet to a customer over a long distance also costs a significant amount of money. If all of this fee is passed onto the consumer, it will be difficult to be charge competitive with pellet plants closer to the customer. Finally as transport still relies on fossil fuels, increased transportation means increased carbon emissions. This therefore increases the carbon footprint of the biomass pellet manufacture process.

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Pellet plants create diverse grades of pellet energy for dissimilar consumer markets. One grade is focused more on the residential market, with extra pellets focused more on industrial wood burning systems. Currently the residential market is predominately interested in pellet fuels which can offer them similar levels of convenience that their previous gas or oil based heating system offered them. The lower ash percentage of premium grade pellet fuel, yet more expensive, serves the majority of the residential market. Industrial customers are more interested in the higher ash but cheaper energy pellets. Depending on the type of wood material that is to be processed at pellet plants, this will dictate the appropriate pellet mill for the application. For dissimilar materials the pellet mill may necessitate to operate an additional speeds. For instance for softer matter the pellet mill can operate at higher rotation speeds.

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