Biomass pellet market in Vietnam
As a developing country in Asia, Vietnam has a strong demand for biomass, which is a clean, cheap and renewable fuel for heat and power generation. A research has shown that about 70% of rural population in Vietnam (Vietnam has a 61.3 million rural population, which is 72.9% of its whole population) is depended on biomass as a cooking fuel. Moreover, there is also a large scale demand of heat for drying purposes, which is required in the wood processing industry, the agricultural industry, brick making industry, cement industry, beer breweries, pottery, etc.
Traditionally, the manufacturers in Vietnam use the firewood fire furnaces or co-firing of coal and firewood to provide the heat they need. But over the last decade, some local companies realized that biomass pellet is a better fuel for heat and power generation. The total biomass used for heat production was 565.7 PJ (157.2 TWh) in 2005, and the number is growing rapidly during these years. The statistical table of 2005 is placed as follow:
| Biomass type | Use sector | Total biomass use by biomass source | ||
| Household | Small industry | TWh (PJ) | mill. tons | |
| TWh (PJ) | and handicraft | |||
| TWh (PJ) | ||||
| Firewood and wood residues | 80.74 (290.6) | 21.03 (75.7) | 101.76 (366.3) | 24.4 |
| Paddy straw | 22.04 (79.3) | – | 22.04 (79.3) | 7.8 |
| Rice husk | 7.73 (27.8) | 2.91 (10.5) | 10.64 (38.3) | 3 |
| Bagasse | 1.92 (6.9) | 1.16 (4.2) | 3.08 (11.1) | 1.5 |
| Other biomass | 10.35 (37.3) | 9.28 (33.4) | 19.63 (70.7) | 8.5 |
| (Cane and maize trash, cassava stem etc.) | ||||
| Total by use sector | 122.78(442.00) | 34.38(123.8) | 157.16(565.7) | 45.2 |
What the local investors should know is that, there is not only a strong domestic need of biomass pellet to produce heat for drying process and electricity for its process, but also with Gemco complete pellet line, you can produce high quality wood pellet to export.
Raw materials for pellet plant in Vietnam
There is a large range of raw materials for biomass pellets. Normally, we can divided the biomass pellets into two types, wood pellet and other biomass pellet. Wood pellet is the most common biomass pellet fuel in the market. Moreover, there are different types and grades of the pellets based on the different usage for electric power plants, home, or other applications.
Take wood pellet for example, in Vietnam, there are large quantity of wood wastes which is produced by the wood processing industry. As we all know, low rate of wood residues depends on high processing technology, the types of raw materials and the types of final products. Due to the lack of technology, the Vietnam wood manufacturers still use the old fashion techniques to process the wood materials. It is resulted in that only 40% of the timber has been manufactured as final products, therefore, the left 60% of timber becomes wood wastes, which shows up as wood chips in various sizes and types.
Besides, as an agriculture-oriented country in tropics, Vietnam can also provide large quantity of rice husk and bagasse as raw materials for pellet production. Typically, the wood pellet manufacturers can collect the raw materials from surrounding households, sawmills, wood processing manufacturers.
GEMCO pellet plant in Vietnam
Below, you can see the turn-key pellet plant that Gemco has built for our Vietnamese client, which is one of the largest pellet plant in Asia.
| Capacity | routine: 20 ton/h maximum: 32 ton/h |
| Raw Materials | wood shavings, chips |
| Numbers of Ring Die Pellet Mill | 16 sets of ring die pellet mills
( 8 sets work, 8 sets standby ) |
| Constituent Parts | log splitter, belt conveyor, drum wood chipper, crusher, storage bin, dryer, screw conveyor, elevator, automatic iron remover, wood pellet mill (BPM 508), pellet mill cooling system, horizontal pellet conveyor, pellet cooler, semi-automatic packing machine, spare parts. |