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Wood Pellets
| Trees
are the ultimate solar collectors
storing
the sun's energy!
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Throughout
human history this stored solar energy in the form of
wood has been used as a heat source. Today,
thanks to wood pellets, heating with this natural,
traditional, carbon neutral fuel is modern, clean,
convenient and super efficient.
What exactly are wood pellets? The answer is – super-compressed dry wood sawdust, which is ‘glued’ together with natural lignins from within the wood. These small (6mm diameter) pellets are a concentrated fuel source that burns with high efficiency and as they are small and round they can be fed at a controlled rate into a burner.
Pellets can be used to fuel pellet boilers especially designed for the
purpose and wood pellet stoves (with or without back boilers)
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Wood
pellet boilers are completely automated, including
direct fuel feed from large pellet stores and heat
exchanger cleaning. Ash emptying from once a
month to once a year depending on model.
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Pellet stoves require less attention compared to traditional wood burning stoves
with integral fuel hoppers store enough pellets for 1 to 3 days operation and
ash pan emptying only once a month.
Wood pellet stoves and boilers are fully automatic and almost as convenient as using gas or oil. They are well suited to meet variable load demands and can be operated on a timer. Pellet stoves and boilers operate at high efficiencies of around 90%. Being a very dense fuel, pellets require less storage space than logs or chips.
In contrast to the bulkier wood chip fuel or traditional logs, wood pellets
can be economically transported trans-nationally and internationally. Consequently, although the nearest large scale manufacturer of wood pellet fuel is currently in Northern Ireland, imported fuel is readily available as a cost effective alternative to fossil fuels.
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