People see wood pellet business profitable, so they invest money in it. But it’s not that simple. We have many clients ask tons of questions before investing. In this article, I summary some of the most asked question regarding starting a pellet production business for you.
How to start with a small investment in wood pellet plant?
It is always fair to say that you invest something at first with a small budget, if you see it make money, then you invest more.
This logic is correct, in most cases. But talking about building a pellet plant, things are different.
First of all, you need to understand that, to start a pellet plant as a business, the capacity starts from 1 ton per hour at least.
Because making pellets requires a huge mechanical pressure to the pellet machine, this is not feasible for small household pellet mill, as the latter is designed just for small-scale, e.g. several hundreds of kgs. If you force the small pellet mill to work under heavy load, it’ll break very soon.
So, to do cost down is nothing to complain, but not in the key equipment.
For other supporting machinery, such as the cooling machine, the packing machine, they are not as necessary as pellet machine, if you want, you can even do packing by hand.
The budget of investing a pellet plant is not solely decided by the equipment, it also hugely varies by the feeding material.
For example, if the material is sawdust, things like hammer mill, or dryer is not always needed. While if the material is corn straw, you will have to buy the mentioned equipment for material treatment.
How many wood pellets can be produced for one ton of sawdust?
As sawdust is the most commonly used material to make pellets, this question is also on the top list.
To answer this question simply, it depends on the water content. The finished pellets have water contains less than 10%. The total wood pellets production is also a process of losing water.
It is a rule of thumb that the pellets before entering pellet mill should control its water content under 15%.
Take 15% for example, one tone of material contains 0.15 ton of water. After pressing, the water content reduces to 10%, leaving 950kg solid.
In conclusion, one ton of sawdust material produces 0.9 ton of pellets or above is reasonable.
You can imagine that if the water content is the raw material is higher, the pellets output is lower.
The very basic knowledge that everyone should know about wood pellets production.
People keep asking very basic questions, that’s real and that’s a good thing. It helps us to get closer to know how the potential clients are approaching to the issues that they are confused. To help them learn quicker, I prepare a list for the common senses.
- The wood pellets capacity is calculated by tons per hour, not by day or by year.
- The water content of the feeding material needs to be controlled under 15% before feeding into pellet mill.
- The material size needs to be controlled under 12mm.
- There are ONLY 3 types of pellet mills on the market, they are the flat die pellet mill, the horizontal ring die pellet mill and the verticle ring die pellet mill. While the models can be many.
- Only ring die pellet mills are invented for large-scale industrial uses.
- The pellet fuel is clean energy, but the pellet production business is not very energy saving.
What is the largest capacity a pellet mill can have?
To be honest, this question doesn’t make any sense.
Because one machine always has its limitation. None of the pellet plants has only one machine. The right way is to combine several ring die pellet mills to work together to reach a certain output.
How much is a pellet mill?
To make things clear, knowing the price of a single pellet mill doesn’t help you a lot. As for pellet production business, you need far more than one pellet mill.
A pellet plant may include the following equipment: the pellet mill, hammer mill, log chipper, debarker, dryer, cooler, packing machine, conveyors, screening system, dust removing system, silos, fan, etc. Each type of machine has multiple models for your choice.
Therefore, for people who want to invest in a pellet plant, the better way to ask a price is to provide sufficient information to your supplier so that they can make a complete offer for you. This information can be the material condition, the output you estimate, the budget you can finance, to name just a few.
Can I make money by investing a pellet plant?
There is no simple answer to this ultimate question.
From the clients that we are serving, some earn quite a lot. some struggle to survive.
Because there are too many reasons for both success and failure.
Among them, 3 factors are ready for you to consider in top priority.
- The raw material. Again, the material plays an important role. It likes the foundation of a building. Abundant, cheap material guarantees half of your success.
- The equipment quality. Spend tons of time to find a suitable supplier, don’t make any rush decision.
- The sales. The international pellet fuel market is pretty good in recent years, and so is the competition. How to reduce your production cost is the No.1 issue. For instance, if you have your pellet plant building very near to a seaport or a transportation hub, you are one step ahead of your competitors.
How to choose a trusted pellet mill supplier?
The fact is that more and more pellet mill suppliers in the world are emerging, especially in China. As a Chinese supplier, we know things closer than most of the clients. There are some tips that you can follow when choosing a supplier.
- Check if the photo of the machines, as well as the projects, are real. Some new factories have less information suchlike. So they copy from others. Take a close look at the photo, sometimes the watermark tells the truth.
- Experience. You can get this information by checking the corporate registration history or the website history.
- Call them. Ask questions to see if they are competent enough.
- Pay a visit is always the best way.
Reading one post is far, far from understanding how to build a pellet plant totally, that is the reason why GEMCO writes a complete guide on pellet plant building, don’t waste your time anymore on searching, download it and start learning today!