Prospect of developing the biomass pellet in china

Biomass pellet fuel usually refers to crush the solid materials into powder and compress them into the cylindrical solid fuel through pellet mill. The diameter is less than 25mm and the draw ratio is less than 4; the usual size of diameter is 6.8.10mm. The pellet has solid density and small volume which are easy for transport and storage. At the same time, the small volume make them has more contact surface with the air, which is good for burning; the uniform specifications are favorable to automatic transmit and burning; as the fuel for industrial boiler, residential fireplace heating, household cooking. Comparing with the original state of biomass resources, the pellet fuel can be burned for long period of time. From above, we conclude that biomass pellet is a high quality, clean and high efficiency fuel.


Biomass fuel is a rich ore which need urgent exploring. For instance, the calorific value of straw in our country is equivalent to 5 tons of standard coal annually. It is expected that the annual straw waste is over 2 billion by 2020 which is equal to 1 tons of standard coal and the amount is equivalent to the annual production of coal in He Nan province. A large amount of agriculture processing waste and forest processing waste can be used for biomass power station or make into BP pellet. The ash content after burning can be returned to the field as fertilizer which is a circulation process from waste to treasures. The total amount of ash content after consumption is about 8000 ton. And it can be high quality fertilizer to the field. If the investment to biomass for farms is put into the biomass power station, it can create up to 5 to 10 tomes of employment opportunities.

The application of biomass pellet fuel has been promoted from the publish of the 11th five year plans, the National Development and Reform Commission is expected to realize the aim of reducing 20% of carbon emission and 30000MW of the generator capacity by 2020, which is a significant target. Although the large-scale investment to the construction of biomass power plant may be encouraged and supported by the government. Due to the slow investment returning, as well as the rising prices of raw materials and the expected fixed raw material demand, it leads to the high cost for power stations; even the price for grid electricity plus subsidies can not make the power generation enterprise to make money. Also it has unpredictable risks from fluctuating of international energy prices at the same time.



The biomass power generation is suitable to build at places where there are rich resources for biomass with reasonable prices around the 100 kilometer scopes. Therefore, the biomass pellet plant can be selected at the place where near the raw materials for biomass due to the small investment, the regions that has less contact with the biomass power station can be developed fully. The pellets can be burned as the auxiliary fuel in the power generation to reduce the expelling of harmful gas. It also can be used in the surrounding industry boiler and medical instrument which conversed to use biomass pellet fuel. In rural area, conversing the low thermal efficiency (10%) traditional wood stove, promoting the high efficiency biomass pellet stoves and family fireplace heating system has been listed one of the important tusks for constructing new energy in rural area. The development of this technology are mainly concentrated on two regions, the first is the processing technology of high density biomass pellet fuel. The other is the technology development of high efficiency stoves.

At present, there are many domestic enterprises engaged in the biomass pellet fuel processing industry, but their production are separated and small in production scale which has not formed into large scale as an industry. Due to the different raw materials for different plant, it is difficult to come into being the quality standard. Many small manual workshops produce the pellet which has high ash content and can not up to the combustion ratio. 

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