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About Wood Pellets

Wood pellets can be used to produce heat in a specially designed stove or boiler. In addition, some existing solid fuel and oil boilers can be converted to make use of wood pellets.

Pellets are mostly manufactured from waste products from sawmills and other wood processing industries. The materials used, include ground woodchips, sawdust and bark. No chemical additives are needed, the natural lignin of the wood itself serving as a binder, although sometimes small quantities of maize starch are added as well.

Since January 2007 the National Energy Foundation has been a partner in European Funded Pellets@las project.  The aim of the project is to promote and create more transparency of the European pellet market. The core work of Pellets@las is therefore to collect and disseminate available information on prices, volumes and trade of wood and mixed biomass pellets (MBP) in all EU25 + countries. Further information about the project, the results, pellet standards across Europe etc can be found on the project website.

Due to their low moisture content (about 6% to 10%) pellets have a high energy content, similar to high quality coal. Only minor energy losses are experienced due to the need to burn off the moisture content. Being manufactured to a consistent size (usually about 2cm long with a diameter of 6 to 8mm for domestic heating), low moisture content and high density means that wood pellets can be used in automatic clean-burn heating appliances. It also means that the boiler response time is fast and the technology is controllable without increasing the load on the environment.

This and the fact that they are clean and easy to handle make them particularly suitable for domestic use. Being compressed also means that they take up less room than other forms of wood fuel.

Pellets have the following advantages over other types of wood fuel:-

• Less volume to transport and store (due to higher energy density)
• Fewer deliveries
• Consistent size and moisture content
• Versatility - can be used in stoves and boilers
• Less ash and emissions
• Pellets are dry and can be stored without degrading
• Flow like a liquid and can be used in automatic machinery
• Easier to handle
• Easier to ignite

Log Pile is a project from the National Energy Foundation which was supported by DEFRA.