Anyone Ever Make Pellets on the Farm?

UpstateFarmer · Aug 20, 2011

We have about 10 acres of rough, but usable land I was going to put in fallow. However, I am starting to think about growing some type of grass or something, and make "wood" pellets. We burn wood for our two homes on the farm (15 full cords per year) and I am wondering how expensive it would be to produce pellets, or briquetes or something, by chopping and compressing some type of grass crop on the non-prime land.

Has anyone seriously checked into it, or is actually doing it?

Larry Caldwell · Aug 20, 2011

Lots of ash from grass. If you have wood, it's your best bet. You can also burn just about any kind of grain in slightly modified pellet stoves. Corn is popular, but wheat and barley will also work.

magicheater · Aug 20, 2011

It would seem that the equipment to produce them on a small scale would make it cost prohibitive. Perhaps there are some other things you might do to decrease your consumption of heating fuel.

forgeblast · Aug 21, 2011

ebay sells pellet mills and I did see northern tool now has an oil press type mill for biodiesel production. I had a buddy running a sawmill looking into making his own pellets. Not sure why he didnt do it.

tmajor · Aug 21, 2011

A friend of mine, has planted "switch grass". From my brief research, it's supposed to be better than corn for ethanol and can be used to make pellets. I'm not sure how he intends to sell or process it.

RickB · Aug 21, 2011

tmajor said:
A friend of mine, has planted "switch grass". . I'm not sure how he intends to sell or process it.

He probably doesn't either, which puts him in line with about 85% of the folks who plant switchgrass.

DANOCHEESE · Aug 21, 2011

A local guy here keeps playing with making his own pellets. He has access to all the sawdust and distillers grain he wants for free. He says that he can still buy them cheaper from the large producers. It is a hobby for him.

He has one of the Chinese hammer mills and it works fine with the proper recipe of mash. Issues he runs across are being able to keep the pellets as pellets and not crumbling. He has ran everything thru the mill surprisingly grass make a good pellet with the moisture in it. He does test the heat value of each type of pellet nothign scientific. Distillers grain does make a pretty good pellet.