wood pellets
"Fuel pellet" is the umbrella term for pellets produced for heating. Their history goes back to the early decades of the 20th century on the American continent.
The prepared raw material is pressed with high pressure and a cylindrical fuel material is produced with a length of 10-50 mm and a diameter of 6-8 mm. In this form, the product offers more benefits than the original material. It requires less space, thus it is easier to store and deliver, it is cleaner, but above all you can control the solid fuel heating with this material. By the pelletizing process the solid fuel is made "liquid", thus fuel-dosing is similar to liquid fuels or to gas. Heating or water warming with fuel pellets is as easy as with gas fuels.
It is environmentally friendly which is an important characteristic. Compared to other fossil fuels its CO2 exhaust during burning is only as much as the plant absorbed and bound during its life (CO2 neutral).
Pellet burning has many other further favourable characteristics. Among others pellet based heating is cheaper than all other fossil fuels. There are many estimates, how much cheaper it is to heat with pellets than with gas, and even real pessimists talk of at least 25%.
Concerning its raw materials there are two main fuel pellet groups: Wood pellet and residual substance pellet (Agro pellet). It is worth talking about the two types separately because they are quite different in terms of ash, chlorine, potassium, sulfur and silicon content, and thus their burning techniques are also different.
Wood pellet
Under the expression 'pellet' many people mean wood pellet. Today it is the best-known and most widely used energy source. High-quality wood pellet is made from the byproducts of wood-processing factories (sawmills and furniture manufacturers). These raw materials, i.e. chips and wood dust are free of wood crusts, leaves and dirt. Pellets made from these materials have less than 1% ash content. It is important, because wood pellet stoves - particularly, the smaller, more sensitive furnaces used at home - are often clogged because of high ash content. It is crucial that furnaces produced for wood pellets can only function reliably with wood pellets.
We offer DIN and ÖNORM conforming, high-quality Hungarian pellets made from hard wood. Besides the standard 15-kg bag packing, we also supply 1 m3 and 2 m3 Big Bag packs. During the accredited laboratory test, 6mm diameter pellets showed over 18 Mj/kg heating value and low ash contents (0.64%).
Agro pellet
During the course of plant cultivation and related processing a lot of industries produce many "other" plant-based by-products. These raw materials are processed further in high pressure, thus pellets with high heating value can be produced. Referring to the origin they are called Agropellets or residual substance pellets. Hungary's background offers good opportunities for producing Agropellet, however its wide-spread usage has encountered technical obstacles. Many people try to burn Agropellet in wood pellet stoves or in traditional stoves, but then they are faced with several problems. Most important of all, developers have to find a solution to the large quantity of ash, moreover they have to solve the problem of relatively low melting temperature. All this shows that ash-sensitive Agropellets are not suitable for wood pellet stoves, i.e. you need special burning devices. Further challenges are the corrosive chemicals which arise during the burning process. In addition, there are often salt precipitates on the surface of the furnace.
Despite all the above mentioned technical challenges, fueling with Agropellet is not impossible. In recent years you can see a significant increase on the pellet stove market, more and more well-known Hungarian and foreign (Austrian, Slovakian, Croatian, Czech, Polish) manufacturers offer products that are suitable for soft pellet combustion.