How to make wood pellets at home？

Choose flat die pellet mill for home use

To make wood pellet mill at home, you should have a homemade wood pellet mill. As we know, wood pellet machine can be classified into ring die pellet mill and flat die pellet mill, the former on is for industrial use, while the latter one is for home use and small-scale production. The flat die pellet mill is small in volume and light in weight. Some types are equipped with wheels that allows you to put it to anywhere. The most important factor is that flat die pellet mill cost much lower than ring die pellet mill and most families can afford.

Chose pellet mill with right engines for home use

So you decide to buy a flat die pellet machine for home use. But wait! What kind of drive power do you have the easiest access to. Homemade pellet mill can be driven by electric motor, diesel engine, gasoline, and PTO.

Generally, electric motor pellet mill is the most popular type, because electric power is available in most places, and it doesn’t requires you to add oil. But if you want to make wood pellets on the farm or beside your material raw material stacks, it is not convenient to connect it with electric power. For such conditions, people tend to choose diesel engine pellet mill. The diesel engine pellet mill has as many capacities as electric motor pellet mill. What’s more, if you already have a tractor or other agro machinery, I recommend you to choose the PTO pellet mill. This pellet mill is excellent for farmers’ home use. It cost much lower than the former 2 types, because it doesn’t have a drive engine itself. Just connect it with a tractor, and the pellet mill will be driven by the engine of tractor.

The followings are the specifications of the 3 types

Choose suitable types according to the raw materials

What material you are you going to process with the homemade pellet machine. Though I put this question in this place, it doesn't mean this question matters less. Actually, you should take it into consideration from the beginning. Generally, wood pellet mill is able to process a wide range of materials, including sawdust, crop straw, rice husk, peanut shell, leaves, grass, bamboo, paper, efb, etc. As they have different hardness, their requirements on flat die pellet mills are different.

TICO flat die pellet mills can be classified into roller-turned pellet mill and die-turned pellet mill. The roller-turned pellet mill operates as the roller rotates and the flat die keep stationary, while the die-turned pellet mill works as the roller keep still and the flat die rotates. Roller-turned pellet mill has higher capacity for the more efficient structure, so it is able to process hardwood materials that die-turned pellet mills are unable to process.

Roller-turned pellet making machine

What support equipment do you need?

To make wood pellets at home, a single homemade wood pellet mill is usually not enough, because you are not likely to have raw materials meeting the requirement of making pellets. For making wood pellets, the moisture content of raw materials should be between 10%-18%, and the size should be less than that of holes on flat dies. As the hole size of flat die are commonly 6mm, 8mm and 10mm. So the required size of raw materials are 3-5mm.

If the moisture content of your materials doesn't accord with the requirement, you need a flash dryer or rotary dryer to remove the water. Flash dryer is suitable for small-size material, while rotary dryer applies to large-size materials. Also, if you don’t have too many materials to process, or if you don't have requirement on the speed of drying, you can simply put them on open-air condition and let the wind bring away the moisture naturally.

To reduce the size of raw materials, a wood hammer mill is indispensible. There are large and small hammer mills. For home use, a small hammer mill is enough. It is able to cut materials with the diameters of about 30mm into fine pieces whose diameter is from 2mm to 5mm. Meanwhile, wood hammer mill also have electric motor and diesel engine 2 types.

The process of making wood pellets at home

Wood pellets are made from biomass materials through a series of processes. To make wood pellets at home, you need crush the materials into small size with a wood hammer mill, then dry the crushed materials with a dryer machine(optional). After that, you can feed the materials into a flat die wood pellet mill. They will get formed into cylindrical solid pellets. The wood pellets can be used in pellet stove, furnace, cooking range for heating and cooking. They are more economical-friendly than coals, and more efficient that crude biomass. In developed countries, more and more families choose wood pellets as the fuel for heating in winters.