While sawtimber mills and markets continue to struggle, the fuelwood portion of the forest economy is growing slowly. Recent good news out of Maine has it that International WoodFuels plans to break ground on a $20 million wood-pellet plant this spring. The company plans to produce 100,000 tons of pellets a year. It will use leftover hardwood – mostly white birch – in its pellet blend. The plan will create 24 jobs in the plant itself, and provide another market for local wood.
A news story on the plant in the Maine Morning Sentinel contained several interesting tidbits that may be of interest to our readers.
When heating oil was priced at more than $4.25 a gallon in the summer of 2008, the sales of pellet stoves increased 500 percent.
Currently, the price of heating oil in Maine averages around $2.55 a gallon; WoodFuels currently sells its pellets for $255 a ton, which is the equivalent of a $2.10 heating oil price. While the price of pellets has shot up across the region in the past year, these numbers seem to indicate that the price is still cheaper than burning oil.
Finally, I found the reports of the industry’s growing pains interesting. Apparently some of the early pellets were too dusty, and left too much ash in the burn pot. There were also some reports of pellets disintegrating in long-term storage. Most bags of pellets don’t contain a use-by date, which could mean trouble for consumers.
The story got me wondering about the differences in quality between various brands of wood pellet (I don’t own a pellet stove myself, so I have no personal experiences to report). A quick web search revealed several techniques to evaluate wood pellets – like anything on the web, the advice should be taken with a grain of salt. Some good general rules hold that a high-quality pellet should be durable, hard, shiny – it shouldn’t have anything strange in it, like paint (indicating the pellet was made with construction and demolition debris).
Pete Lammert, forest service forester for the Maine Forest Service, says that the industry standard states that premium pellets should produce 1% ash or less. If you really want to know how efficient your premium pellets are, collect the ash from a ton of pellets in a 5 gallon can and weigh the ash when you’re done. Divide the pounds of ash by 2000 and see what you come up with. A premium pellet should produce 20 pounds or less of ash per ton.
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