Straw Pellet Plant: How To Make Hay Grass Straw Into Pellets

Date: 09/16/2020 09:30:33 From: wood-pellet-plant.com Clicks:

Where there is a farm, there will be a lot of farm waste. Among them, corn stalks, cotton stalks, wheat stalks, hay, and grass are essential wastes from farms. If these straws, hay and green grass can be used as fuel, it will not only reduce waste, but also increase farmers' income. How to make hay grass straw into pellets? Generally, straw/hay/grass pellet mill are indispensable. If it is a large output, you need to purchase a straw pellet production line. Let me share with you some information about the straw pellet plant in scotland.

Fraser Mackintosh, along with his wife Helen and his parents Jim and Allison, runs a successful hay and haylage firm, Ugie Valley Feeds, based at Mains of Buthlaw Farm, near Peterhead.The family runs a 1,200-acre arable enterprise and a further 500 acres of grass is mown each year to produce hay and haylage, mainly for the equine market but also for crofters and farmers in the Highlands and islands.

Straw Pellet Plant

They have innovated over the years with various pieces of equipment to make their hay and haylage products more accessible to customers, and this approach has now been applied to their straw enterprise.Fraser describes transporting straw as an “expensive caper” especially when it is going to customers in places such as Shetland and South Uist.To tackle this, and also provide a new outlet for straw from the farm’s extensive arable enterprise, the family purchased a straw pelleting plant, which is now based at Kinloch Farm, near St Fergus.

Straw Pellet Plant How To Make Hay Grass Straw Into Pellets

Step 1 – Preparation of raw materials

The harvesting process leaves straws mixed with dusts and other alien materials like stones, metals and plastics. These foreign components have the potential to damage pelleting mills and also lower the quality of the pellets. They must therefore be removed.

Step 2 – Grinding

Straw biomass is basically a tube-like material that needs to be crushed to the required size that can then be used in the aforementioned applications. Grinding mainly involves cutting and chopping the straw the appropriate dimensions usable in pelleting machines.

Step 3 – Drying

This process is often bypassed yet is still worth mentioning as part of straw pellet formation. Straw is delivered containing about 15% moisture content which is ideal for producing pellets. When saw dust is also used, then drying is added to the process.

Step 4 – Conditioning

This is basically the process of increasing straw hardness to the desired state. It involves application of steam or water as well as binding agents and additives. Conditioning is necessary for achieving right temperature that allows malleability and melting of the lignin (which is found in raw straw) to act as the binding agent. Increasing hardness prevents excessive abrasion when pelletizing.

Step 5 – Pelletizing

Straw ring die pellet press is the main phase of producing straw pellets. During this proves, consider aspects of moisture content in the straw,fibre strength, particle size and natural binders. All these influence the pellet quality. It is also important to prevent pellet breakage, overheating and pellet die blocking. These challenges may lead to increased energy costs, damaging the pellet mill and poor pellet quality. It is thus important to use high quality straw and also use thicker pellet die to increase compression length and yield favourable quality.

Step 6 – Cooling and Screening

After pelletizing, the straws will generally be hot and soft. They should then be cooled down to attain desirable hardness while refining fine particles. The final product will have reduced moisture content yet depicting increased bulk density. The moisture is often reduced from the 15-20% to below 10% while density rises from 130 to about 600 kg/m³.

Straw Pellet Plant

The plant and all its equipment was transported to the Kinloch Farm site in May and up to 12 tonnes of pellets are currently being produced on site every day, however there is scope to expand production in future.“You feed big square bales of straw into the machine and it chops up the straw, extracts the dust and then it makes it into pellets,” said Fraser.“The heat in the process of making the pellets also kills off any bugs in the straw.”He said the pellets are packaged in 500kg or one-tonne bulk bags, or in smaller 15kg retail bags.

The family sent some to a number of its larger equine customers and feedback has been good.“The pellets are mainly aimed at the horse market but there’s definitely a place for them with people that show cattle who would buy wood shavings for bedding, and they are also good for crofters,” said Fraser.“They are easily handled. A tonne of straw is a lot of bulk but it does not come to a lot when it’s in pellet form.”

They can also be used in place of wood pellets in biomass boilers, and Fraser believes straw pellets offer a more environmentally-friendly option for biomass boiler owners, describing them as “tree-free biomass”. He added: “The straw is all produced within a 10-mile radius of the plant, and it’s a by-product from the arable enterprise.”“Quite a lot of folk use grass pellets as a feed so we are going to do some trials into this,” said Fraser.

If you want to use straw, hay or green grass to make fuel pellets, please contact us to develop a design plan for you free of charge, and recommend suitable straw pellet machines or grass pellet machines and production line equipment for you.

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