Pellet mill attachment

[Bill Barrett]

I finally got a price, $5000 will get you about 400lbs production. The guy I talked to said they over rate them pretty bad.
I thought about making one out of a rear end.

 

[semperfi]

i have one of these mills and to answer alot of questions with one answer, don't waste your money. i can make shiny pellets but the volume is about 200# per hour. the 15 hp engines run well but bog down and try to stall easily. i have replaced with a pick up engine. much more power. there always seems to be something wrong and you spend more time fixing than you do making pellets. as for anyone who does buy one, don't go through a dealer in the us. they are marking them up so bad it isn't cost effective. go through alibaba.com and uy direct. bought mine from pelletpros for $4000 . then delivered one at work to a guy who payed $900. do yourself a favor and just buy your pellets. you won't have sawdust everywhere and you might have some spare time to enjoy life.

 

[dangerdoc]

looks like this thread has somewhat died, so i'd like to revive it.

I've been thinking about this over the past year or two. Just bought a small tractor MF GC2310 (23 hp) and so i am now rethinking this with a little more seriousness.

So just some thoughts on the subject...

Has anyone made any progress?

Do the prices requested seem a bit high?

Can I build one?

Seems like the press and die are the key componant. Other than that you need the pto shaft and gear box. Is there any existing implement that delivers the gear ratio required to power a pellet mill? Can i cannibalize something to get what i need?

I saw some vague questions regarding moisture content. What i have found is that most sites reference a pre-pelleting content of 12 - 18% with a finished moisture <8%. SOme commercial places use the waste dust to generate heat for the dryers.

Also there was a comment about not pelleting durring the winter as it's too wet. I'd think the opposite. The air is much dryer in winter than spring. The difficulty is bringing the temperature up to drying temp, no?

I am looking at using miscanthus x Giganteus (Elephant grass) as my source. Trials in europe get up to 18 metric tones per acre. More if there was a method to keeing the leaves on. The leaves fall off leaving a bamboo-like cane up to 12 feet tall. I finally located a source and purchanges 4 plants. I'll see what the growth rate is truely like. Additionally, i am considering leaf waste from fall collections. Infrastrutire is already in place with town leaf collection sites. I am gussing that using such material as the source would eliminate the need for a hammermill and i might get away with a series of weed whackers in a tube design.

Have fun!
Poppa

A little late but..

In the midwest, the relative humidity outside does not vary much with the seasons. However, when you heat the air in the winter, the relative humidity goes down inside the house. If you are storing your wood in non-conditioned air, it's final water content will not vay much between summer and winter.

Of course drying will be much slower in the winter.

 

[reclaimed fuels]

do you have any suggestions on a good stock for pellets.

 

[freeman on the land]

The pellet pro pto mill is a hooked up attachment.. I order one after seeing what it can do.. You can pellet alfalfa feed, chicken feed and fuel pellets and many kinds.. these mills can do up to a metric ton per/h and used with a old farm,hammer mill,augers, feed grinder you can make some money.
YouTube - Pellet Pros Personal Mill Demo

half way though the video is the pto one

 

[MYOP]

If you are using sawdust, you will need to buy a dryer. The sawdust has a very high moisture content and will not dry adequately in a pile.

If you are not using sawdust, you will need a hammer mill. before going to the dryer.

Hay would not need a dryer but you will need a hammer mill.

The pellet machine will go through dies quickly, you need to make sure that you will be able to replace them and get other parts.

After you make the pellets, you will need to cool and dry them before storing them.

Depending on your souce material, you will need to experiment to see if you need a binder.

You do not actually need a dryer. If you are simply using kiln dried sawdust you actually just need to add water. The only time you would ever use a dryer is if you had chipped fresh cut timber. The pellet mill take at least a year to wear out a die and actually using a cheap binder is recommended. It's only about $40 a 50# bag and that should get you about 1 ton of pellets.
check out Make Your Own Pellets for better info.

 

[MYOP]

A little late but..

In the midwest, the relative humidity outside does not vary much with the seasons. However, when you heat the air in the winter, the relative humidity goes down inside the house. If you are storing your wood in non-conditioned air, it's final water content will not vay much between summer and winter.

Of course drying will be much slower in the winter.

It's not the humidity in the air it's the temp. The sawdust in the mill need to heat to about 200 degrees to form a decent pellet. If you store your sawdust outside in 20 degree temps you'll have a hard time heating it up to 200 degrees. it will take a couple of passes. Visit Make Your Own Pellets for all the info you need. There's even a forum to help.

 

[MYOP]

The pellet pro pto mill is a hooked up attachment.. I order one after seeing what it can do.. You can pellet alfalfa feed, chicken feed and fuel pellets and many kinds.. these mills can do up to a metric ton per/h and used with a old farm,hammer mill,augers, feed grinder you can make some money.
YouTube - Pellet Pros Personal Mill Demo

half way though the video is the pto one

a better place to purchase is Make Your Own Pellets They will not take your $ and run like pellet pro. Pellet pro actually sold out to a lady who doesn't know much about making pellets. www.makeyourownpellets is coming out with a US made machine I think in Feb 2010

 

[FxdGrMind]

Keeping this active as more information shows up on the web.

See this US Manufacturer's web site:

Buskirk Engineering | Welcome | American Made Pellet Mills

Here is where I found out about this producer:

Agriculture equipment, farm magazines, farm equipment, farm inventions, farm machinery, agriculture machinery

 

[Jaylegger]

I can't imagine anyone using these types of home based mills could create a product which do anything more than create a gigantic headache. Proper management of the source material whether it be sawdust or shavings is critical and key for producing a final product which won't be problematic in most pellet stoves and that's assuming you have the proper dies and rollers spec'd for the mill. Purchasing a mill without equal consideration of what you're feeding it and the equipment required to process the source material to obtain a consistent and specific set of parameters in all likelihood will lead to extreme frustration.