3 Pellet Plant within 6 months

The last 6 months was hectic, nevertheless installing and commissioning them successfully was most satisfying.

Much improvement have been added to these plant which makes pelleting success a breeze, not many can claim good pelleting within few days of commissioning .

4 pellet mill 

2 pellet mill

1 pellet mill in operation

 If you notice the pellet quality , there is little dust and pellet was just nicely compact ( not black ) and the length is what was set by the knife ( not short or broken ). I believe those who produce this kind of pellet will have very low electricity consumption and low wear and tear on parts . 

As for us , our motto is finding the " SWEETEST SPOT " . Achieving this will automatically reduce tremendous cost thus higher profit per ton .

GOOD DAY TO ALL 

It have been quite some time since I last blog due to my moonlighting in a biomass power plant on top of the normal business of setting up pellet plant . After the power plant stint , much needed experience were gained and would be useful for future opportunities that would arise .

Currently we are setting up a new pellet plant with capacity of 4 ton per hour with initial target production of 1,200 ton per month . Production will increase to 2,000 ton per month within 6 month of commissioning . As we have space and electricity supply ( main factor to go big ) and possibly sufficient raw material , it is hope that capacity can be increase to 5,000 ton per month in a few years ( finger crossed  ) .

The new plant with much design and engineering upgrade as compared to the old plant would cut down workers to bare minimum of 4 worker per shift for the whole line , thus pushing operation to 3 shifts would be easily achievable .

Some upgrades as below :

1 ) All conveyor are connected , no human intervention , reduce fine dust dusty environment 

2 ) Use of inverter for motors to control speed when changes happens

3 ) All storage area for raw material are calculated and engineered to ensure non stop operation even though there is prolong holiday or shortage of raw material , up time per annum can be push beyond 300 days . We do not just take off the shelf design for this plant after our first plant many many problems .

4 ) many more upgrades

Lastly , any taker for our pellet please contact us at 

leesengann@yahoo.com

Thank you for your time .

PELLETING DIFFICULTIES

Maybe I am not convincing enough in my statement that PELLETING is very difficult . 

My records and visits to many pelleting plant , be it Wood or EFB  Pellet , till todate the failure is nearly approaching 20 plant , big and small included . Definitely the number is much higher than this figure .

Potential Investor must understand the reason behind it to figure out why so many failure in this industries .

I append the major factor for the failure :

1 ) Wrong Machineries

•   Pelleting process need very high pressure to bind the dust back into pellet , many machineries are not able to cope with the HIGH PRESSURE and thus will be damage before it even start to really produce pellet .Talking about pressure , do you know how it work ?
• Pelleting need dry dust , dryer are needed to do the job , that is why American Dryer price are in the range of USD1 Million and above , the reason is you need consistent Moisture Dust to be able to produce consistently good grade pellet , otherwise there will be no pellet at all . I doubt many understand the science of drying !!
• Small Pellet Mill smaller than 500 kg / hour are a definite no no unless you are willing to put your money to burn , go calculate the returns !!!
• Go look at my video on Wood Pellet Manufacturing again , look at the rate of output and then compare the price of machineries . Then go visit the supplier and look at their output to be convince .

The above are only 20% of the main factor , if you do not know about the above , please do not invest , do your homework again , don't waste the precious cash for FAILURE .

2 ) Service and Training 

• I did mentioned earlier about this . The machineries from China is cheap because they do not provide proper Service and Training , this cost will easily increase their pricing by at least 20% . Low price act as an inducement for potential investor , so many will jump in but end up without anyone to turn to when failure stare at them 
• Supplier of machineries are just supplier , I am convince many are great Marketeer , they have never run a pelleting plant before . So when the going gets tough the supplier do not get going , they just ignore you .... , sounds familiar I guess . 
• Supplier are from China , they are not locals , they cannot stay long to guide and train local staff , so you can guess what will happen if problems start to crop up , who you gonna call !!

3 ) Experience and Skill

• Ask yourself , how much you know about Biomass and Manufacturing , I would say , if you are going to invest based on the so many inquiries you get from the market , please keep your cash in the Bank , at least it earn interest . If you do not have over few years on Material experience and few years in manufacturing it is a definite no no to invest 
• Do you have an enquiring and analytical mind ? Every action will have a reaction , when something happen there must be REASONS why it happen , it cannot happen just out of nothing . There is a Chinese saying , Die also don't know because of what !! I am saying this because this will happen many many times and you will need your skill and experience to overcome it 

Mark my word , go check around before you really decide to invest in this industry . There are too many failure which is not good for this industry overall .

EFB PELLET

EFB Pelleting

I get many calls enquiring about pelletisation of EFB ( Empty Fruit Bunch ). We did sample production many months back , it was easy for us as EFB is a single species raw material as compared to wood sawdust where the range of wood density varies widely which is difficult to control during material preparation . You can see the quality of EFB Pellet from the test run was of higher quality in terms of length and density ( Shinier ) . The tricks of getting good quality EFB Pellet is at the material preparation side  . If the input quality is good and with properly setup Pellet Mill there will be no problem in pelleting EFB .

EFB Pelleting Plant is more expensive compared to Wood Pelleting Plant as material preparation section will be needed to process EFB strand into smaller particles . EFB Input can be in the form of Whole Bunch EFB or Shredded EFB . Shredded EFB is the result of EFB being pressed in Palm Oil Mill for additional oil extraction .
EFB Plant setup are therefore different from Wood Pellet Plant because of additional machineries and thus planning ahead will bring tremendous profit later  .

In the case ot Shredded EFB or Pressed EFB , it need to be cut to shorter length . Thereafter , I would like to Dry it here when the EFB is in short length . But there are other ways to do this depending on your setup and dryer capability .

 Material Sizing is very important before the material enter pellet mill otherwise if the strand is too long it will choke the Pellet Mill and jammed the machine . This is where the skill and experience comes into play .

Some say Flat Die Pellet Mill is better and some argue   Ring  Die is as  good , this  depends  on  the " DRIVER " if you get what I mean !!!

The good pellet mill is the one that give you good quality pellet and high efficiency with minimal maintenance and downtime .

 "  DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS STUNT WITHOUT PROFESSIONAL GUIDANCE  "

There are many cases of failure to do it right from start and in the process losses are huge . Get correct advice from reputable and reliable supplier with know how to start . Many a times the seller of machineries just want to close sales and promise you the sky where in fact ( and most does ) they do not have the skill to run a pellet plant , worst if their machineries are not reliable . I have been to many plant which is a failure , my statistic , 7 - 8 out of 10 are failures or loss plenty of money before they can even start to make profit .

WOOD PELLET / EFB PELLET BOILER

BOILER

The boiler are design for winter heating in Europe and are suitable for industries which need hot water e.g hotel hot water supply and industrial cooking .

In Malaysia , currently all small and medium size boiler are fuel by either gas or diesel making it environmental unfriendly .

The high number of boiler using fossil fuel are due to the following reasons :

1 ) Previous low oil price at below USD40 / barrel ( around RM1.00 / liter )

2 ) Convenience in handling diesel boiler

3 ) No other alternative ( technology & supplier of biomass boiler )

4 ) No other suitable fuel for small boiler

5 ) Perception of Biomass Boiler are unclean

Most of the above reasons are currently being solved with new technological advancement and availability of new biomass boiler and suitable fuel ( Wood Pellet or EFB Pellet ) .

We plan to introduce this type of pellet boiler for industrial user in Malaysia with our wood pellet .

Pricing start from RM75,000 for 200,000 kCal / hour to RM200,000 for 1,000,000 kCal / hour Wood Pellet Boiler . The low cost are due to mass production for this type of boiler .

Payback are normally within 5 month to 1 year inclusive of the boiler , FOC after the payback period .

Characteristic of Wood Pellet / EFB Pellet Boiler are as follows :

1 ) Fully automatic with preset temperature needed for the hot water , burner will start and stop at preset level

2 ) 90% efficiency due to it's design and efficient air fuel ratio balance during combustion

3 ) high safety feature without chances of explosion as it uses wood pellet which is less flamable

4 ) very clean burning without smoke although ash need to be dispose off once every week

5 ) space saving as structure of the boiler is compact and sturdy

For the first unit we sell in the Malaysia market , we are giving great discount to promote this technology .

Write to us / Call us NOW ! ! !

Drum Dryer

Sawdust Drying

We are touching this topic specifically due to it's importance to make good wood pellet unless your sawdust is already dried to 15% Moisture Content ( MC ) .

If you have gone through our earlier writings , the cost of drum dryer are significant for a Whole Line Wood Pellet Plant . The High price are due to it's big structure and complication in maintaining stable MC sawdust output . Sawdust comes in various MC from 12% to 60% , therefore it is important to control the MC for optimum pelleting otherwise you would not get high standard wood pellet and high production efficiency .

We will now study a typical drying process base on the following conditions :

1 ) Input Sawdust MC 35%

2 ) Output Sawdust MC 12%

3 ) Drying Rate 2 Ton Per Hour Output

To reduce MC from 35% to 12% you would need to evaporate 20% of water , based on 2,000 kg per hour output , water that need to be removed is 600kg and the input sawdust is 2,600 kg/hr .

To remove 600kg of water you will need 640kw ( 550,000 kCal/hour ) of energy which is equivalent to burning 200kg/hour of wood offcut . In short 100kg/hour need to be combusted to dry 1 TPH ( output ) sawdust . Cost of drying would be about RM5 / ton sawdust if your offcut cost is RM50 / ton .

The Calculation Chart below is from ASPENTECH software and reconfirm by manual calculation which I did not show here due to it's tediousness of calculation , suffice to say the input data , output data and design of the dryer are correct .

Drum Dryer selection are important , many factor affect the cost of the dryer , in this case we believe Drum Dryer Size of Diameter 1.5 meter X Length 9 meter should be enough to dry 2 TPH of sawdust .

Cost of this dryer should be around RM200,000 landed in Malaysia c/w stove , electrical panel and cyclone .

We hope to use this Dryer and the Pellet Mill to make EFB Pellet once we have started Wood Pellet Production probably in August 2011 .