
Wood fuel pellets can be used as a home heating fuel in biomass boilers or special pellet burning stoves. Pellet stoves are better than regular open wood fireplaces, because they burn cleaner with much less smoke and soot.
Because wood pellets are extremely dense and contain a low moisture content (lower than 10%) means that the pellets can burn in the stove at a very high combustion temperature with improved efficiency and much lower ash content (less than 2%) compared to burning conventional firewood.
As the cost of heating our homes using fossil fuels, such as heating oil and natural gas increases, more and more people are looking at pellet heating as a serious alternative. A large number of pellet stoves, forced hot air heating furnaces and wood petted burning boilers are all available on the market to take advantage of this new biomass heating material. In some countries they are mixing and co-firing wood pellets with coal to produce electricity.
Commercially sold wood pellets are usually made in large pellet mills from recycled biomass wastes which is then compressed and extrude into pellets. But small domestic sized pellet mills are starting to become more common and affordable even for home owners.
