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Make your own pellets with a small pellet mill

With the fast-changing development of science and technology, at the same time, the consistent increasing costs of fossil fuels and increasing environmental consciousness of our society, in addition, the costs of feeding poultry and livestock increasing rapidly, consequently people prefer to use biomass pellets as fuels or for feeding animals due to the cost-effective and convenient feature. In this case, small pellet mill is the perfect choice for small scale pellet production by households, this comes to the question: how to make your own pellets with a small pellet mill? Look the procedures as follows.

Choose the proper raw material. 

Generally speaking, small pellet mill can be used to produce fuel pellets and feed pellets for household. For fuel pellets production, the raw material is wide, such as woodchips and shavings, sawdust, straws, corn cobs, sunflower seed shells, peanut shells, branches, boards, leaves and other wastes, etc. and for feed pellets production, raw material generally refers to corn meal, corn stalk, soybean, wheat bran, peanut shell, rice husk, grass etc. At the beginning of making your own pellets, it’s a critical factor to choose the most suitable raw material because only the qualified raw material can produce consistent quality pellets. After choosing the proper raw material, there are some procedures you should follow to make sure that you can make your own pellets efficiently.
 

Reducing. 

You should consider the size of raw material before proceeding to other stages which is a very important procedure during pellet production. The size of raw material must be reduced due to the limited die diameter. It must be smaller than the die diameter, hence if the size of raw material is too small or too large, it can affect the quality of pellets severely, so the most suitable length of raw material is about 2-3mm.
Logs the raw material Wood shavings which are made of logs Saw dust which can be made into pellets

Drying. 

Ensure the suitable moisture content. Sometimes the moisture content of raw material is too high to pelletize, thus you should dry the raw material, here we discuss how to make your own pellets with a small pellet mill, so you can leave your raw material in the sun to dry naturally which can lower your investment. Make sure the moisture content is approximately 10-20%, or else if it is too low, it’s hard to be pelletized into pellets, and if too high, the pellets produced will not be burned totally and can release more ash, this may reduce the combustion rate and do harm to the environment.
 

Pelletizing. 

After the two above procedures, you can proceed to the pelletizing procedure. Here it’s important for you to choose a most suitable pellet mill. Generally, there are two types of pellet mill: flat die pellet mill and ring die pellet mill. To make your own pellets at home, it’s better to select flat die pellet mill. It includes a die and roller. The working principle is when the raw material is put into the pellet mill, the die and the roller will be interact each other, thus press the raw material into the holes of the die to form the pellets.  The die diameter can be adjusted according to the end use of the pellets. For instance, the die diameter for feeding purpose is smaller than the fuel purpose. There’s a reference for you, Gemco pellet mill is a preferable choice due to the reliable quality of pellet mill. The higher quality of the pellet mill is the better quality of the final pellets will be.

Wood pellets in the pelleting chamber

Cooling.

When the pellet mill press the raw material, the inner temperature of it is too high, consequently, the pellets come out of the pellet mill with a high temperature; hence they should be cooled naturally. In addition, in order to ensure the hardness of pellets, cooling is necessary.
 

Screening.

Not all the pellets produced are qualified, there are also some that didn’t form properly or be broken. These fines should be separated. This to a great extend can increase the use ratio.
 

Packaging and storing. 

This is the last process, generally the pellets can’t be used up at a time, put the rest of the pellets in some plastic bags and seal them, store the bags in a dry place to prevent from moist and mould. 
 
 
To make your own pellets with a small pellet mill can save the cost of buying fuels and it’s suitable for you to feed your animals which can meet the animals’ requirements. So don’t hesitate, choose a preferable pellet mill such as Gmeco pellet mill to make your own pellets, you’ll have a great surprise.