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You are on the right track to
heating your home for FREE!
I hope this answers some questions and sheds more light on exactly what it takes to produce your own burnable pellets from biomass materials.
MakeYourOwnPellets.com over-time will have a series of instructional videos for you to better understand “How To” work with your equipment to produce your own pellets.
Tips, Tricks and customer based knowledge can also be found in “Talking Pellets” our forum for users to chat and discover what others are doing and experimenting with.
Photo Gallery is where our customers share their photos with each other and the world. It’s Fun, informative, and down right laughable at times, so be sure to take a look at the Photo Gallery and feel free to send along your photos!
Let’s begin,
What do I need to use to make Pellets?
Well to start, you need to have a supply of sawdust, or leaves, or grass, or hay, or whatever is dry enough (10-15% moisture) to make your pellets form. It cannot be chunks, or sticks. It must be in a sawdust or pulp form to be put into the Pellet Mill. The largest size entering the Pellet mill should be no larger than pine shavings, and even that should be reduced whenever possible. Why? Because the biomass needs to be pressed through a flat die with small, (6mm for wood pellet, or 4mm for animal feed pellet), holes drilled into it. Pressing the biomass through the die holes is what forms the pellet. So what you put in the hopper must be small enough to go through, simple.
How do I make sawdust if I don’t own a sawmill?
You cannot put a 2×4, planks, whole leaves, straw, hay, or sticks into the pellet mill, so what’s the solution? A Hammer Mill. A Hammer mill does exactly what it sounds like; it hammers (pulverizes), the heck out of stuff and reduces it to small particles to feed into a pellet mill.
GREAT! I’ll stick my 2×4’s into the Hammer mill!
Nope, afraid not. While a Hammer mill is the best solution to replacing a sawmill to get you the sawdust you need, it too, can only take certain size material. Remember a Hammer mill is not a wood chipper!
If wood is what you are trying to pulverize, then wood chip size is best for a Hammer mill. If your running hay, straw or a dried biomass less dense than wood through your Hammer mill, then of course you can insert larger pieces into the Hammer mill. The biomass should not be “fresh cut” or “green”. Dried wood chips are the favorite food of Hammer mills.
You can pelletize any dried biomass and burn them in your pellet stove. People use waste paper, cardboard, corn stalks, softwood and hardwood sawdust, almost any dried biomass you can think of is potentially FREE heat! But remember, sawdust when burned leaves the least amount of ash content and therefore, will burn best in your pellet stove. Although some pellet stove are “multi-fuel” and can burn a variety of biomass pellets.
Okay, I ready to make Pellets
It takes a few things to produce uniform pellets:
Moisture
Correct moisture content in your raw material is essential. Depending on how dry your raw material is you may have to add more moisture, or reduce it if the moisture is too high. Each biomass is different and sawdust pelletizes best at around 10%-15% moisture. If you have a “Moisture Tester” your all set. If not, buy one. It’s well worth the money.
Binder
The next thing to do is to add a “Binder”. A binder is what holds the pellet together. It also acts like a lubricant during the pelleting process. During pelleting, heat will be generated which seals the binder and sawdust together, causing a hard-shell pellet to form.
We prefer to use a “Wood Pellet Binder”, which is specially formulated for smaller, residential Pellet mills. It is in powder form, shipped in a 50/lb bag which will make @1 ton of wood pellets! Make Your Own Pellets, LLC, exclusively recommends using this product, since it is easy to store, adds no additional ash content when burned, and is all natural. And since smaller residential mills do not use steam injection, they cannot produce the heat that the larger plants do, our wood pellet binder activates in the heat range our smaller mills require. Order it!
Mix the binder and sawdust together prior to putting them in the pellet mill.
Heat
You will see steam rise from you mill, don’t be alarmed! This is normal. You do want to “seal in” that loss of heat though. Add more mixture to you hopper so that it prevents the steam from escaping. The pellets will come out extremely hot to the touch, usually over 180 degrees, they will need to cool and dry prior to use.
When your Pellet mill is producing hard pellets it will start to bog down your diesel. This is actually good. This is where you’ll make the best pellets. Make sure you increase your rpms’ to compensate for this.
Drying
Since most pellet stove require fuel to be >8% moisture, your new pellets will need to dry before use. Simple flatbed, open air drying, is sufficient and your pellets should be ready in a few hours. Use a moisture tester to test the moisture content of your pellets. The dryer they are, the more heat will be produced.