Archive for the ‘Pellet burners’ 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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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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    Growing interest

    Friday, January 15th, 2010

    On January 20 and 21, Maine Energy Systems will be conducting its monthly training session for installation and maintenance of its AutoPellet line of pellet-fired boilers. As is customary, Herbert Ortner, the founder and owner of OkoFEN Pelletsheizung of Niederkappel, Austria, will conduct the training as he does in ten Western European countries.

    However, the participant list in this session of training is indicative of a growing awareness in our region of biomass as a heating alternative for homes, businesses, and institutions. Typically held to 15 participants, this session has swelled to more than 20 participants because of growing interest from those outside the normal ranks of installing contractors.

    The coming session of training includes participants who are members of five separate heating engineering firms, two of them do project engineering only, two of them are installing engineering firms, and the fifth is a very large scale engineering, installation and service firm.

    In addition, four trainees represent a large oil distributor from western Massachusetts, one is from an established alternative energy company, and two are from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.

    Notably the Director of Technical Education for Maine Energy Markets Association, formerly Maine Oil Dealers’ Association, will also be among this month’s trainees. The group is rounded out by the traditional installing contractors who will make the products available to their customers.

    The remarkable and sudden growth in interest in learning about biomass heating for buildings of all sizes in our region is a strong indicator that people are concerned about growing our local economy through consumption of “homegrown” fuel, about substantially reducing the portion of our carbon footprint attributable to space heating and about preserving oil stocks for more critical applications.

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

    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 »

    OkoFEN Training

    Friday, September 11th, 2009

    In the interest of full disclosure, the author is a principal of Maine Energy Systems

    MESys has become the first importer of the renown OkoFEN pellet boiler systems from Niederkappel, Austria. The boilers are marketed by MESys as their AutoPellet line and come in capacities ranging from 41,000 BTU/hour to 191,000 BTU/hour for stand-alone boilers and for capacities up to, and beyond, 764,000 BTU/hour for staged units.

    AutoPellet boiler system

    AutoPellet boiler system

    Herbert Ortner, owner of OkoFEN and Maine Eco Pellet Heating LLC, was the first to produce a pellet boiler in Europe in 1997. Since that time, he has refined and improved his line of pellet boilers to be the most sophisticated in Europe with the deepest penetration in the European market.

    During the last week in August, Herbert came to MESys headquarters in Bethel, Maine, to train regional contractors on the installation and maintenance of the OkoFEN boilers. The two day training sessions were filled to capacity. During the sessions contractors learned about the use of biomass as a residential heating fuel, began to understand global efforts to replace fossil fuels with renewable fuels, and had plenty of time with the boilers. The three demonstration boilers were disassembled and reassembled by all present and ample time was spent configuring and adjusting boilers using control box simulators created by OkoFEN for the task.

    Training sessions will be held regularly to ensure there is an adequate workforce to install and service these systems.

    I enjoyed the session and was stricken by the greatly increased user-friendliness of this system over those I’ve been familiar with, including my own MESys 4000. The burning technology in these systems is a bottom-fed design, which has pellets burning on a “blade,” or plate that feeds secondary air to support the combustion. Ash and other combustion by-products simply fall off the blade into the bottom of the boiler as new fuel emerges from the center of the blade to be burned. This feed system reduces burner sensitivity to unwanted combustion by-products like clinkers and slag.

    Bottom fed burner design

    Bottom fed burner design

    Once in the bottom of the boiler, the ash is compressed into a removable container for easy user cleaning on infrequent bases determined by fuel consumption rates.

    That these systems approach liquid fuel burning systems in their ease of use should help the US market find adoption easy for the economic and environmental benefits realized by conversion to regionally produced, renewable fuels.

    Dutch Dresser

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    Adopting new technology

    Monday, June 22nd, 2009

    In the interest of full disclosure, Dutch Dresser is a principal of Maine Energy Systems which distributes pellet-fired boiler systems for residences, institutions, and businesses.

    In the 1990’s, I spent much of my time on the technical and social aspects of distribution of the Internet to populations largely unfamiliar with its uses. That population included nearly everyone at that time. This all began as experimental work in my office at Gould Academy, where I then worked, and grew beyond anything I could have expected. Over a course of years, I consulted and spoke widely on matters both technical and social about the Internet, often focused on school and rural community application.

    I mention that earlier experience here because the endeavor that we at Maine Energy Systems and others in the alternative thermal energy world, in general, are engaged in now is such a close analogue to the deployment of the Internet to unaware communities that I can’t resist making the comparison.

    As I stood at the Podium at the Heating the Northeast conference in Nashua, NH, a while ago talking to an intent audience about the different technologies of pellet fired boilers, I was having remarkably vivid recollections of standing a decade and a half ago before large populations of would-be computer networkers anxious to know all about the protocols and technical practices of the Internet, information now only of interest to the technorati.

    We are in the same phase of satisfying the heightened interest among technicians about alternative thermal energy now that Internet revolution was in during the late 1990’s. No doubt someone has named this phase, already, but to me, it is the The Deployer Phase. The most common and most productive interest now in deployment of these important technologies lies in training those who will ultimately play a significant role in bringing the technologies to the public, the installing contractors.

    In the early Internet days, there were Early Adopters who just had to try this new technology even though they weren’t quite sure what they would do with it. They simply had curiosity, interest, and sufficient capacity to explore. The very early adopters also shared patience as a dominant attribute. The Internet “industry” lurched forward with changing systems and “improving” applications, each with its own start-up pains, early failures, and ultimate acceptance or failure. Technologists in the United States were leading the emergence of that telecommunications revolution, within ten years it services would be widely distributed and used around the globe.

    The thermal biomass heating revolution, which is beginning to occur in the United States, differs from the Internet revolution in that it already has a substantial history in Western Europe. Early Adopters here are not experiencing the heating equivalent of operating at 300 baud or uudecoding images for viewing in a largely text based system, instead they are enjoying the substantial developmental work of pioneers from Sweden and Austria, most notably.

    Systems are currently available in the U.S. that are simple, robust, efficient and moderately priced. More expensive and more sophisticated systems with ease of use rivaling liquid fuel systems are also coming available in the U.S. for the coming heating season. A broad range of energy output levels will be available which will allow for efficient, renewable energy heating of buildings from the smallest, best insulated cottage to institutional buildings.

    Right now, consumers are interested in whether burners are top fed, horizontally fed, or bottom fed, how ash is handled, and whether or not the systems comfortably handle pellets that are less than perfect. It is easy to predict that this specificity of interest will give way to name brand recognition as homeowners gain confidence in pellet boiler technology and begin to understand the tremendous economic and environmental benefits of home heating with locally produced renewable resources.

    Dutch Dresser

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    Janfire NH burner reconfiguration

    Monday, June 22nd, 2009


    In the interest of full disclosure, Dutch Dresser is a principal of Maine Energy Systems in Bethel, Maine. Maine Energy Systems distributes the Janfire NH burner discussed in this post.

    As those who’ve read my posts will know, I’ve enjoyed my MESys 4000 system this past winter, and I have experienced no significant issues with the Janfire NH burner that fires the Bosch cast iron boiler. Nonetheless, others have experienced different issues with their systems, so all burners in the field have been receiving a system reconfiguration this spring to eliminate known weaknesses. I had my burner done last week, one of the last to receive this reconfiguration.

    Peter, the Bosch tech, removed the burner from my house, took it to our MESys facility, and performed the necessary reconfiguration. This included a full inspection, the replacement of two temperature sensors, one in the drop shaft and one in the burner bowl, and the installation of new processor software.

    Once the burner work was complete, Peter gave my boiler a thorough cleaning, including the flue vent. While cleaning the boiler, Peter discovered that the refractory insulation in my boiler door was cracked, so he replaced it. He also ensured that there was plenty of insulation above the burner aperture. This reduces heat to the drop shaft temperature sensor. It is that sensor that would detect any burn back issues, so keeping it cool prevents any false positive readings.

    Any reluctance I’d felt earlier to having the burner modified, I soon lost. Peter did a great job. The burner continues to operate beautifully for me, and seems to spend even more of its time in either “keep alive” or “waiting” mode now that it just heating domestic hot water. I’m anticipating somewhat lengthened cleaning cycles this summer.

    I continue to find the transition from oil to renewable, locally produced fuel for heating my home a satisfying experience.

    Dutch Dresser

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