Archive for the ‘Pellet fuel’ Category

Home heating and the environment

Monday, August 23rd, 2010

Eighty percent of the #2 heating oil burned in the U.S. is burned in the Northeast.  We have adapted well to a fuel that was plentiful, easy to distribute, and easy to consume.  Much of the world, and a growing number in the Northeast,  have recognized that the patterns we’ve grown accustomed to are unsustainable. Roughly 85% of the energy we use in our homes in the Northeast is used for heat and domestic hot water.

Pellet-fired central heating has some distinct economic advantages for our region.  Retaining money spent on home heating energy in the region can only mean good things for employees in our region.  In truth, the economic possibilities for our region from a significant shift from fossil fuels to renewable, biomass heating are breathtaking.

Thoughtful people looking at conversion from fossil fuel heating to wood pellet heating quickly ask three  questions:  what about atmospheric carbon, what about combustion emissions, and could our forest sustain more home heating with wood and remain healthy?

Let’s look at those questions.

What about atmospheric carbon?

Nearly everyone is concerned with the increase in atmospheric carbon that has occurred in recent decades.  While some argue that the Earth’s populations will be in trouble if atmospheric carbon concentrations exceed 360 ppm, current carbon concentration is approximately 390 ppm.  The rapid, dramatic increases in atmospheric carbon concentration have arisen largely from human combustion of fossil fuels which releases carbon that has been “stored away” in fossil form for millenia.

The prevailing wisdom has held for some time that burning wood does not significantly increase greenhouse gas carbon dioxide because the carbon stored in the trees is part of the active carbon cycle.  That is, the carbon emitted from burning wood as carbon dioxide was removed from the atmosphere by the growing tree and will return to the atmosphere whether the tree is cut and burned or dies and decomposes. Green plants will again take up the carbon and the cycle will repeat.

Recognizing that fossil fuels are utilized in harvesting and transporting the wood and pellets has led to the widely accepted claim of  70-75% carbon neutrality for the combustion of wood pellets for heating. The US Environmental Protection Agency made the following statement in 2010:

“Although the burning of biomass also produces carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas, it is considered to be part of the natural cycle of the earth. The plants take up carbon dioxide from the air while they are growing and then return it to the air when they are burned, thereby causing no net increase.”

What about emissions?

There is no sulfur and little nitrogen in biomass. During combustion AutoPellet boilers produce no sulfur oxides,  less nitrogen oxides and less carbon monoxide than oil or gas boilers. They also produce very little particulate matter but a bit more than oil or gas boilers (oil boiler .007 lb/million BTUs, AutoPellet .019 lb/million BTUs).  This performance has the AutoPellet systems achieving the very demanding standards that the EPA is proposing for biomass boiler systems.

Could our forest sustain more home heating with wood and remain healthy?

Currently Maine alone has the mill capacity to produce over 300,000 tons of pellets per year.  Many of those pellets leave the state because there is not a sufficiently large local market for their consumption.  300,000 tons of pellets would heat more than 33,000 typical New England homes, so, if the pellets stayed in the State, 7.5% of Maine’s oil-burning homes could be heated now with today’s local pellet manufacturing capacity.

The Northeast is heavily forested and traditional consumers of harvested wood have been consuming less and less material for decades.  In 2009, following a substantial 2008 run-up in oil prices, Maine Governor John E. Baldacci commissioned a task force to study the issues surrounding greater use of wood for thermal energy in Maine.

The Wood to Energy Task Force considered a 10% conversion of residential heating in Maine to pellet heating over the decade.  In looking at longer term forest products implications, the Task Force drew on the “Maine Forest Service Assessment of Sustainable Biomass Availability: Absolute Supply is not the Issue” in concluding “…there can be enough wood in Maine in 20 to 30 years to eventually make a significant proportion of Maine’s homes and businesses independent of imported oil without a demand induced scarcity of forest-based raw material and thus without a demand induced price rise even if the pulpwood demand remains constant.”

The answers to the three conscientious questions are all well-considered and positive answers.

  • Atmospheric carbon emissions will be substantially reduced by those who switch from fossil fuel burning to pellet-fired central heating.
  • High quality pellet boilers have very favorable emissions profiles reducing sulfur and nitrogen oxides and meeting, or exceeding, very stringent EPA proposed rules for particulate emissions.
  • There is an ample pellet supply in Maine today to convert more than 30,000 Maine homes to clean, renewable, locally produced pellet fuel.

The author is the managing director of Maine Energy Systems, which imports and assembles OkoFEN pellet boiler systems.  He can be reached at dutch@maineenergysystems.com

Posted in Environmental issues, Fuel consumption, Pellet burners, Pellet fuel, Uncategorized, Wood pellet boiler | No Comments »

New Hampshire Takes Leadership Role

Thursday, May 13th, 2010

On May 11,  2010, I had the pleasure of attending a meeting in Concord, NH, in which Jack Ruderman, Director of the Sustainable Energy Division of the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission,  Laura Richardson, ARRA Coordinator for SEP, NH Office of Energy and Planning, and Barbara Bernstein, Sustainable Energy Analyst, NH Public Utilities Commission, were accepting industry assistance in the drafting of language for a proposed Residential Central Pellet Heating System Rebate for the residents of New Hampshire.

This was a refreshing experience for several reasons.  First, the New Hampshire PUC had decided to earmark a small, but meaningful, sum of ARRA money to begin to catalyze residential fuel switching in New Hampshire through incentivization of residential central pellet-fired heating systems.  Their goals for the proposed plan are intelligent and forward-looking and recognize the importance of helping homeowners take advantage of locally produced heating fuel for economic, environmental, and independence reasons.

Second, the government officials sought industry advice on ensuring that the equipment to be incentivized would include  equipment that would both be sufficiently automatic to satisfy American homeowners and insurance underwriters and would be sufficiently well developed to be environmentally friendly.  They also understood the value of reasonable pellet storage volumes to encourage a growth in bulk pellet distribution to ultimately replicate the distribution systems which have successfully provided us with liquid fossil fuels for years.

I applaud those who have advanced the constructive, forward-looking thinking represented by this effort.  New Hampshire citizens can be proud of those in their government who are pro-actively addressing energy sustainability issues.

Dutch Dresser

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Heating fuel prices

Tuesday, May 4th, 2010

There are all sorts of strategic, environmental, and regional economic reasons for large segments of the population in the Northeast to switch from fossil fuels to renewable wood pellet heating for their homes and businesses. Reasons like

  • reducing dependency on foreign oil,
  • reducing carbon footprints, and,
  • spending heating dollars for our own products.

    • In the world outside the heating industry, these are good, noble ideas that would be nice to embrace if there were ways to adopt them that made personal financial sense.

    The good news is the spread between pellet pricing and heating oil pricing is growing as oil in Maine rests somewhere near $2.80/gallon and bulk delivered pellet prices have been reduced to $220/ton delivered. $220/ton pellets are the cost equivalent of $1.83/gallon heating oil. At today’s prices, a home using 1,000 gallons of oil a year would save approximately $960/year on heating and domestic hot water.

    Maine Energy Systems, a regional distributor of bulk pellets, has reduced its delivered price to $220, and has reversed last year’s policy of setting prices for the year. Last year’s effort to assure users of pellet availability and price stability had MESys hold onto its $280/ton price into the spring. As mill prices dropped, it became clear to us that despite our intention to reassure the market about stable pellet pricing, this practice was not in the best interest of the market.

    Going forward, we plan to adjust prices periodically to reflect the mill prices we pay for the pellets. With ample production capability in the region and a somewhat depressed international pellet market, we don’t anticipate significant changes in bulk pellet prices over the coming months.

    The picture continues to improve for those who seek financial justification for doing the “right thing” on so many other fronts.

    The graph linked below has fascinated me for some time. Whether it’s precisely correct or only conceptually correct, we were born into the single period in world history when all of the petroleum will be consumed.

    longperiodgraph

    Dutch Dresser

    In the interest of disclosure, the author is the Managing Director of Maine Energy Systems, in Bethel, Maine


    Posted in Fuel consumption, Pellet fuel, Uncategorized, Wood pellet boiler | No Comments »

    Lessons along the way…

    Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

    In the interest of full disclosure, the author is a Director of Maine Energy Systems, in Bethel, Maine.

    As one of the leading developers of the residential biomass heating industry in the United States, we’ve learned a lot of lessons along the way. As the owner and operator of a pellet-fired residential boiler system, I’ve learned a lot of lessons along the way as well. Following are a few of the lessons we’ve learned.

  • Sizing of boilers is still a bit mysterious, but the picture is clarifying somewhat. It is the American practice to oversize boilers because cost differentials between boiler sizes are relatively small and contractors don’t want to risk “I don’t have enough heat” phone calls. We have been told by Europeans since we began this venture to size boilers smaller than heat loss calculations would suggest are necessary. That’s a hard sell. However, we are routinely seeing boilers sized to match calculated heat loss running on shorter cycles than are ideal suggesting that smaller sizing was, in fact, in order. We will try to quantify the size reduction that would lead to most efficient use of this technology. In my own case, a purposefully undersized boiler (51,000 BTU/hr vs heat loss calculations of 106,000 BTU/hr) carries the house’s heat and DHW needs until the temperature gets down to 0 fahrenheit. When that point is reached, I can either accept a boost from my old oil boiler or accept the fact that 65 Fahrenheit is the best I can do in my kitchen. One of these days I’ll change my pellet boiler to a 25KW unit (85,000 BTU/hr)
  • Pellet durability is fundamentally important to the success of bulk pellet installations. The pellet mills with which we’ve worked along the way have been very good about ensuring durability of pellets in excess of 98%. This improvement has made a tremendous difference in fuel system dependability.
  • Ash removal cycles result from the complex relationship among boiler efficiency, pellet ash content, and quantity of pellets consumed. Different burner types also create different amounts of waste. Whether ashes are removed from the boiler directly, as with more basic systems, or from ash storage containers, as with more modern systems, the remove cycle calculus must include all of those elements to be at all predictive.
  • Burner system modulation results in reasonably stable boiler temperatures and reduces fuel consumption. The well-established pattern of having burner output follow heat demand provides the same efficiencies that “highway driving” affords automobiles. Cold starts are not part of the picture with modern pellet boilers.
  • Pellet deliveries smell good!

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    Janfire ashscraping and pellets

    Monday, October 5th, 2009

    I have been using a Janfire NH burner in my pellet-fired central heating system for just about a year, now. During that year, I have burned pellets with varying attributes. The burner has been “happy” to burn most pellets, except one batch containing foreign silica, which created debilitating clinkering. No other pellets have fazed the burner.

    Several weeks ago, as one of the owners of Maine Energy Systems, I got to “burn up” some pellets that we wouldn’t sell to our customers because they weren’t burning cleanly. During that burn, I made plenty of hot water over the summer, but had to reduce my ashscrape interval to 15 pounds to prevent burner pot fouling.

    I was delighted to get through with the questionable pellets and add a new load of the pellets we send to customers. When I got the new pellets, I increased my ashscrape cycle to the 40 pounds common in Europe and am enjoying troublefree performance.

    Maine Energy Systems and the University of Maine are testing regionally produced pellets each season to ensure that we understand many of the attributes of those pellets before we make them available to our boiler customers. We are measuring for the concentrations of many elements which become active during combustion, which is common in Europe but not in the U.S. Understanding these attributes helps us ensure good performance for pellet boiler users.

    Dutch Dresser

    Dutch Dresser is a partner and Director of Maine Energy Systems in Bethel, Maine

    Posted in Pellet burners, Pellet fuel, Wood pellet boiler | No Comments »

    Appliance venting regulation

    Wednesday, February 25th, 2009

    Testimony offered in writing in support of a bill that would require rules relating to the venting of multiple devices into the same chimney to be heard at the legislative committee level rather than allowing the Oil and Solid Fuel Board to establish rules without committee intervention.

    An Act To Permit the Use of a Common Flue for Oil and Solid Fuel Burning Equipment, LD 53

    Public hearing conducted by the Joint Standing Committee on Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee, February 25, 2009

    Senator Gerzofsky, Representative Haskell, and Esteemed Members of the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee,

    I am Harry “Dutch” Dresser from Bethel, Maine. I come to you today as a Founding Director of Maine Energy Systems and as one who has been involved in introducing technological change to populations throughout his adult life. I would encourage you to support LD 53 both for the immediate effect a change can have on peoples’ abilities to heat their homes in compliance with the law and for the advantage its passage could lend to a fundamentally important transition we’ve embarked upon as a State.

    I, and many like me, have lived many of our younger years in homes with wood-burning stoves in the same chimney as a large oil boilers; the houses still stand and so do we. However, I am not here to talk about that, I’m here to talk about the regulatory process in times of significant change. That’s what this bill is about.

    80% of the nation’s #2 heating oil is burned in the Northeastern United States. Maine is the largest consumer per capita of heating oil in the nation. 80% of our homes are heated by burning #2 oil. In 2008, we consumed nearly $1.6 billion worth of oil just to keep our homes warm. 75% of that money left the U.S. economy nearly immediately. The uncontrollable spike in oil prices that caused that very difficult winter reminded people in Maine and across the country about the great value of oil. Oil is a remarkable resource; it is the base material in many of our manufactured goods, and is recyclable for repeated use in those applications. We were reminded last winter that oil is also in finite supply and that it is unconscionably wasteful to burn it for heating when sustainably renewable alternatives exist. Despite the low oil prices today, occasioned by a deeply troubled economy, Mainers are turning in ever-greater numbers to alternative means of heating their homes, which will ultimately lead us to greater energy independence in the State. When that heating transition involves wood and wood pellets manufactured in Maine, as 400,000 tons currently are, the net positive effect on Maine’s economy and its tax base is truly remarkable at the same time that greenhouse gas emission is profoundly reduced.

    When transitions as significant as the one we are just beginning to experience occur in a population, flexible, entrepreneurial, business leaders take care of the necessary technological change. Hardware issues resolve themselves quite quickly and products to support the transition begin to proliferate. We are seeing those things occur in the heating fuel transition already. Geothermal technologies are now commonly available, wood pellet stoves are well-established in our region, pellet-fired central home heating systems are becoming more common, and thermal solar installations are taking their places on many roofs. As the public begins to understand the opportunities available to them, early adopters of new technologies have a variety of experiences as new products are refined, and gradually the early majority takes up the new equipment. The way of seeing the base problem is forever changed.

    In Maine, we are currently in the stage of residential heating transition where early adopters are finding ways to heat their homes more inexpensively, more environmentally, and safely using energy sources that are locally available and are sustainably renewable. This transition will spread naturally as more and more people understand the advantages of alternatives available to them and as more and more refined products to support that transition reach the market and find accessible price points.

    Generally, product innovation and public education about product difference and advantage are filled with both stress and exhilaration, but they can be accomplished with focused hard work and persistence.

    The most difficult aspect confronting widespread technological change and adoption is quite frequently that of bringing existing regulation in line with actual characteristics of the new technologies. The regulation has often been established expressly for the existing mature technologies. Often some of that regulation has as its main purpose the preservation of the mature of the mature technology usually accomplished by making it difficult for competing technologies to occupy the same space.

    (Legislation and regulation were ultimately turned on their heads as emerging digital communications technologies supplanted analog technologies and vied for bandwidth on existing infrastructure.)

    With this bill, and surely more that will follow it, we are seeing a new emerging view of residential heating trying to make legitimate space for itself in regulation after it has already made that space in the real world.

    New ways of viewing well-established practices are very difficult for many people. They are often most difficult for those most expert in existing practices who have been well trained to see all issues related to the practice through the lens of a very particular model. As we have already seen, and will see more frequently in our lifetimes, change is not always gradual, and it is not always simply modification of existing practice. Sometimes, it is just different.

    At its roots, the issue being addressed by LD 53 is about beginning to make way for fundamentally changing the way we look at residential, and probably commercial, heating in the State of Maine. I support this bill because it is a political attempt to get decision-making on this critical issue into the larger legislative forum where members will generally have only casual understanding of the existing model allowing them room for open-minded exploration of the issues before them.

    Maine will face many paradigm changing issues in the next decade; it will be wise for the State to learn to look as broadly at those changes as is possible. This bill is an attempt for such thing on a paradigm shift that is underway.

    Thank you for the opportunity to address you.

    Respectfully submitted,

    Harry H. Dresser, Jr., Ed.D.

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    Pellet labeling regulation

    Wednesday, February 25th, 2009

    This is my testimony presented at public hearing on February 24, 2009, to a proposed bill to require those manufacturing or selling wood pellets in Maine to comply with the proposed PFI standards if they used the words “premium” or “super premium” on their bags.

    An Act Regarding the Labeling of Wood Pellet and Biomass Heating Fuel Sold in Maine, HP 238, LD 298, 124th Legislature

    Testimony provided to the Joint Standing Committee on Natural Resources by Harry H. Dresser, Jr., Ed.D.

    Good morning, Senator Goodall, Representative Duschesne, and the Honorable members of the Joint Standing Committee on Natural Resources.

    I am Harry “Dutch” Dresser from Bethel, Maine.

    Thank you for the opportunity to discuss L.D. 298, An Act Regarding the Labeling of Wood Pellet and Biomass Heating Fuel Sold in Maine.

    My testimony comes from three perspectives:

    • I am a director of Maine Energy Systems, probably the largest consumer and distributor of bulk wood pellets in the State of Maine,
    • I am a member of the PFI (Pellet Fuels Institute) national Commercial Fuel Committee, and
    • I heat my large, Bethel home with a Bosch/Janfire pellet-fired boiler system.

    Basically, I would like to share with you the reasoning I shared some time ago with Mr. Bertyl when he sought advice by phone from me. In so doing, I will urge the Committee to find that this bill ought not to pass.

    As you know, wood pellets are a solid fuel derived from hard and softwood in different proportions grown in soils of different chemical composition in regions with variable growing and weather seasons around the State and the region. Because of the many variables affecting wood growth and composition, all “batches” of densified wood pellets are somewhat different from all other “batches.”

    There are many attributes of wood pellets that lead to their suitability, or unsuitability, as fuel for pellet stoves and small, residential size boilers. Most common among them are ordinary factors like bulk density, heating value, pellet moisture content, and non-combustible inorganic ash content. These attributes can be measured by labs, either at the manufacturing site or at third party sites far away. Manufacturers make pellet test information available to me as it is reported out by remote testing labs, typically a week, or more, after the production of the fuel. There are a growing number of manufacturers who test their products on-site, daily for fundamental attributes, and there is discussion about a testing lab within the State, perhaps at the University, for third-party testing.

    Reading the pellet analysis summaries of Twin Ports Testing of Superior, Wisconsin, or of Bodycote of Pointe Claire, Quebec, one finds understandable quantifications of these fundamental pellet attributes. These are the same attributes the Pellet Fuels Institute finds interesting in its proposed standards references in this bill.

    Small pellet boilers are perhaps the most sensitive of pellet burning equipment to poor pellet quality. The heat they generate in the burner is high making more than the basic attributes of the pellet important to understand. Combustion at high temperatures makes the chemical composition of pellets, and impurities that may find their way into their manufacture, at least as important as the more basic measures listed above. This is well understood in Europe where pellets have been used in residential and industrial boilers for more than two decades. Three countries, Austria, Germany, and Sweden have adopted their own standards in law; other European countries are waiting for the adoption of European Union standards likely to be derived from the ÖNORM Standards of Austria and the DIN Standards of Germany.

    If we look at a European report of pellet analysis, we will find twenty-five to thirty attributes tested including the proportions present in the pellets of many elements including fluxing agents like potassium and sodium, and corrosives like chlorine. As we understand more of what the Europeans have already discovered, we, too, will understand the complex relationships among the chemical components of pellets as they’re burned at relatively high temperatures.

    I would urge you to recommend this bill not be passed for two reasons: first, we are young to this industry; there is more we don’t know about pellets than we do. Codifying the little that we currently know could give a regulation unwarranted persistence. Second, the Maine Pellet Fuels Association manufacturing members have unanimously adopted a policy under which they have agreed to adopt PFI standards and are actively replacing poor quality pellets with good ones without much question to the consumer leaving the consumer with little, or no, risk. I’ve returned tanker loads of pellets under these terms; I know it works.

    I have little doubt that we will one day define grades of densified fuel pellets, probably at the federal level. There is no need for us to rush to that moment when those much more astute about the subject than we are moving thoughtfully and cautiously.

    Thank you for the opportunity to address you.

    Respectfully submitted,

    Harry H. Dresser, Jr., Ed.D.

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    Ash cleaning intervals/MESys boilers

    Thursday, January 15th, 2009

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    Until you begin to understand all the variables associated with ash cleaning intervals in a pellet fired boiler system, the question, “how often do you have to remove the ashes?” seems simple enough.

    I decided to test my MESys 4000 boiler to point of failure by not removing ash until a “Problem! Low chimney draft” error indicated it was shut down due to the problems of ash build-up.  Through a couple of test cycles, it became clear that around .8 tons (1600 pounds) of the pellets I’m using would create enough ash to fill the boiler enough to shut it down.  By test, we know that those pellets contain 1% inorganic ash; so, my system can handle 16 pounds of ash before a cleaning out is required.

    My boiler is purposefully undersized for my house, yet it has managed to carry the house’s heat and domestic hot water demands even into this week’s sub-zero weather.  This morning at -12F in my backyard, boiler water temperature was at 177F when I checked it at 6:00 a.m.  To provide this heat for the house, I am burning approximately 100 pounds of pellets per day.  That means that I should plan to clean the ashes out of the boiler every two weeks during this weather in which the burner is running at maximum output full time.  (I clean it every other Sunday; it takes a half hour.)

    The MESys 6000 boilers are using roughly 120 pounds of pellets per day when they are in full fire conditions.  They will handle 40 pounds of ash or more between cleanings.  That means that regular cleanings for those boilers should be scheduled approximately every 30 days if they’re operating under full fire conditions using pellets that generate 1% ash.

    The last qualifier is important.  Pellet ash content varies among manufacturers and even among mill runs.  Pellets produced and tested to PFI (Pellet Fuels Institute) standards that are labeled “premium” will contain inorganic material to produce 1% ash, or less.  It’s not uncommon for pellets to have 0.5% ash, which would double the cleaning intervals.

    Some of our boilers are in the Arctic Northwest, and the pellets there are so clean that ashscrape cycles are set to the available  maximum setting of a scrape every 144 pounds and, even then, the scraping is unnecessary, and ash content of the pellets is at, or below, 0.3%.

    Dutch Dresser

    Posted in Pellet boiler maintenance, Pellet fuel, Wood pellet boiler | No Comments »

    A pellet’s a pellet, right? Well, sort of!

    Friday, January 9th, 2009

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    In the interest of disclosure, I am a Director of Maine Energy Systems.

    Wood pellets

    Wood pellets

    Burning pellets for home heating is a wonderful way to reduce one’s carbon footprint.  Wood pellet fuel is considered by scientists to be a carbon neutral fuel because the carbon released during combustion is in the active carbon cycle.  Trees gather carbon from the atmosphere and release it when they decompose or are burned.  In fairness, the fossil fuel used in the production and transportation of wood pellets makes them closer to 70% carbon neutral when their full life cycle is considered.

    Burning pellets requires that appropriate quality pellets be used for the burning appliance.  Sophisticated boilers should burn premium quality pellets, while mills can use much “dirtier” industrial pellets. There are many measurable attributes of pellets, and they have all been carefully measured by the Europeans for years as they’ve burned pellets in increasingly sophisticated appliances.

    As we deliver pellets in our bulk delivery trucks and burn them in our Bosch/MESys systems with their Janfire NH burners, we learn more and more about how important the various attributes of pellets are.  Let’s talk about a few simple ones.

    Moisture content: Under the standards proposed by the Pellet Fuels Institute, a voluntary manufacturers’ organization, moisture content for premium pellets must be equal to, or less than, 8%.  The Swedish burner manufacturers with whom I’ve talked think that we’re a bit wasteful drying the fuel that much.  Most European standards call for 10-12% moisture in premium pellets.

    Heating value: Measured in BTUs/pound this value is presented various ways:  as received, moisture free, and moisture & ash free. As received values will commonly range between 7,500 BTU/lb and 9,000 BTU/lb. Generally, the higher the proportion of softwood in the pellets, the higher the heat value, an idea that’s counter-intuitive to cordwood burners.

    Ash content: PFI proposed standards call for premium pellets to have 1%, or less, inorganic ash content.  This falls in the middle of European standards, which range from 0.5% to 1.5% ash content for premium grade pellets.  In practice, the home pellet burner will notice this attribute most.  The higher the ash content, the more frequently stoves or boilers will have to be cleaned.  MESys distributed pellets are under 1% ash, so boiler owners can expect to remove about 20 pounds of ash for every ton of pellets burned.  A MESys 6000 can easily hold 40 to 60 pounds of clean ash.

    Pellet durability: As pellets are handled some break.  Since delivering and automatically feeding pellets to boilers systems requires machine handling of the pellets, it’s very important that pellets be durable.  Regional manufacturers are beginning to understand the importance of high durability pellets and are modifying their processes to make harder pellets.  European standards, and proposed PFI standards, call for pellets of 97% to 98% durability when shaken in a standard test unit.

    All of these things are of interest to me as I work to make central heating with wood pellets convenient for American homeowners; they needn’t be of much concern to homeowners as long as they purchase their pellets from a trusted, reliable source offering truly premium grade pellets.  Janfire burners will be carefully configured at installation for the pellets being burned using net heat value and pellet density information to produce the most efficient combustion possible.

    Dutch Dresser

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    First refueling with bulk pellet delivery

    Thursday, January 8th, 2009

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    In the interest of disclosure, I am a Director of Maine Energy Systems.

    When my MESys 4000 (wood pellet fired boiler system) was installed and ready to run, we loaded 3,120 pounds of pellets carefully into the fabric bin in my basement.  My bin is designed to hold 3.2 tons of pellets, but I took what was left in a delivery truck when the day was over.

    MESys large delivery truck

    MESys large delivery truck

    The boiler ran well producing heat and domestic hot water as it burned pellets at the rate of roughly 100 lbs/day in very cold weather.  When the burner indicated it had burned 0. 64 US tons of pellets (1,280 pounds), I removed the ash for the first time and marveled at how empty the storage bag looked. There were no pellets above the pyramid base.

    I couldn’t help myself, I got out the tape measure and the old geometry book to try to determine the volume of the pyramid shaped base of the bag system.  The volume of the pyramid (6.6′ square by 3.3′ tall) proved to be 47.4 cubic feet, a volume that would hold nearly 1900 pounds of pellets. Sure enough, what was left and what had been consumed totaled what was initially loaded. It’s always fun when arithmetic works.

    Fabric bin, 3.2 tons

    Fabric bin, 3.2 tons

    A couple of weeks later, Rodney brought the 20-ton delivery truck to my house, attached the hoses and added 5,500 pounds of pellets to those remaining in the bin.  The delivery took less than an hour and left me a bin mostly filled with pellets.  I shouldn’t need another delivery until spring is in the air.

    Dutch Dresser

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