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The last decade has seen biomass pellets emerge as a serious contributor to the heating fuels market, particularly in Europe as well as the US. Sweden was the first country to really move forward by way of biomass pellets in a major way. The government put serious investment into establishing wood pellet plants around the country taking advantage of the huge volumes of sawdust from one of the major industry in Sweden, timber processing. From Sweden’s case, supplementary European countries followed, along with the US. The true payback of pellet plants to bring economic development are still not fully realised, as smaller more localized plants manufacture more economic sense. As wood pellet fuel is now reaching a wide ample appeal, more small scale pellet plants will be set-up to meet local market demand. One of the biggest obstacles to proficient pellet construction while maintaining a profit margin is transport, both in the sense of raw material plus the finished product. More localized small scale pellet plants can help generate local jobs along with cheap fuel.

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The reason haulage plays such a crucial role in pellet fuel manufacture as it effects the costs of manufacture, possible profits as well as also the credibility of pellet energy as a green energy. Due to fuels such as bio-ethanol and bio-diesel are now used, most haulage still relies on standard, in addition to expensive gasoline. The high price of this energy means haulage costs can be very high. Therefore having large pellet plants which have to have large quantities of raw material transported to the works is very costly. Large pellet plants as wood pellet fuel is still a relatively small market, then have to search further a field to find customers. To then transportation the finished pellet to a customer over a long distance also costs a significant amount of money. If all of this cost is passed onto the consumer, it will be difficult to be charge competitive by means of pellet plants closer to the customer. Finally as transportation still relies on fossil fuels, increased shipping means increased carbon emissions. This therefore increases the carbon footprint of the wood pellet manufacture process.

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Pellet plants manufacture different grades of pellet energy for diverse consumer markets. One grade is focused more on the residential market, by means of supplementary pellets focused more on industrial wood combustion systems. Presently the residential market is predominately interested in pellet fuels which can offer them similar levels of convenience that their previous gas or oil based heating system offered them. The lower ash percentage of premium grade pellet energy, on the other hand more expensive, serves the majority of the residential market. Industrial customers are more interested in the higher ash but cheaper fuel pellets. Depending on the type of biomass matter that is to be processed at pellet plants, this will dictate the appropriate pellet mill for the application. For diverse materials the pellet mill may need to operate one more speeds. For case for softer material the pellet mill can operate at higher rotation speeds.

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