Are you having troubles with cleaning the fallen tree leaves in Autumn? Are you annoyed by the pollution and danger caused by direct leaves burning? With the help of a leaf pellet making machine, neither of them will be a problem any longer. Produced pellets can be used as stove fuel, animal bedding and poultry feed.
Raw Material for Leaves Pellets
1. Universal existence: Leaves can be seen either on small roadside or in large forest. The universal existence feature makes them easier to get in large quantity and various categories.
2. Low cost: Although some collection of raw materials for leaves pellet mill is not free of charge, still most are. In Autumn morning, take a rake and go to a nearby woods by truck, then come back home fully loaded.
3. Easy to grind: In order to make raw materials fitter for pellet making machine, they need to be crushed into 3-5mm particles before other procedures, which is beneficial for leaves to some extent. First, special properties contributes to their easier grinding. Second, shorter processing time reduces the energy consumption of corresponding devices.
Materials and Machines in Leaf Pellet Processing
1. Leaves: Leaves surrounding you with different colors or species can all be accumulated together. So easy and cheap to get
that you can make great profits from them.
2. A little sawdust: If the raw materials for leaf pellet making machine is pure leaves, produced products will have no such high quality as that made from other feedstock. However, a little sawdust mixture can improve the phenomenon in some degree.
3. Wood hammer mill: Wood hammer mill, or called wood crushing machine in general, is adopted to complete the grinding process before pelletizing. In this part, water drop hammer mill is frequently used because of its special structure and high efficiency.
4. Flat die or ring die wood pellet mill: It is in pellet mill that leaf pellets are successfully produced and discharged. For this, both ring die type and flat die type are available, the former for large capacity and the latter for small.
Additives for Making leaf Pellets
Generally, the lignin contained in leaves can play the role of additives under a certain temperature, which together with previously added sawdust makes the molding smooth and successful. If, in rarely situation, it doesn’t work in this way, just mix a little corn starch or flour before delivering them to leaf pellet making machine.
Material Moisture for Leaves Pellet Mill
In most circumstances, naturally-fallen leaves have the right proper water content to make leaf pellets. In case of too much, just air dry or use a drying machine; Too little, add some water. In either way, please make sure the moisture is controlled within 10%~15%.
Attribute of Leaf Pellets
The attribute discussed here includes heat value, size, sulfur, ash content, moisture content and bulk density. Their indexes can be known in the following chart.
| Heat value | Size | Sulfur | Ash | Moisture | Density |
| About 4200Kcal/Kg | 6-12mm | 0.02% | 1.5% | 8% | 650-1300kg/m³ |
1. Heat value: In the process to make leaf pellets, both their shapes and combustion features change a lot, which are wonderfully tested by the 4200Kcal/Kg heat value and cylinder-shape appearance. With compact structure and high work efficiency, leaves pellet mill makes all of the previously impossible becomes possible.
2. Size: Their size changes with that of leaves pellet mill die. Generally speaking, 6mm, 8mm, 10mm and 12 mm are most frequently used because leaf pellets with these diameters have been proved possessing better combustion characteristics more than once. Of course, special requirements can also be customized upon requirements.
3. Sulfur: As the main substance causing acid rain and atmospheric contamination, sulfur in leaf pellets is very little, just 0.02% or less. In this way, environmental pollution won’t worsen due to the burning of this renewable and green biomass fuel. Furthermore, when using leaves pellet to heat stove or boiler, the corrosion of them needn’t worrying like some other resources.
4. Ash: On one hand, little ash causes little harm to surrounding atmosphere, which ensures you cozy warming beside pellet stoves. On the other hand, the reduction of ash after processing in leaves pellet mill reduces the residues in devices, which lowers the possibilities of unexpected malfunction, such as blocking and efficiency problems.
5. Moisture: Lower moisture can make sure leaf pellets are lighted in a shorter time. Of course, if 8% water content is not low enough for your personal application, air drying or a drying machine is both meet your needs.
6. Density: When coming out from leaf pellet making machine, their density is as high as 650-1.3t/m³, much more improved than original leaf materials. As one standard to measure the good or bad of fuels, this will undoubtedly bring leaves pellet to a higher level.
Leaves VS Leaf Pellets
1. Convenience: The per cubic weight of leaves is about 180kg at most, which is much lower compared with the 650+kg of leaf pellets. Nearly four times less of occupied area makes the latter easier to deliver and store. The convenience can be seen accordingly.
2. Pureness: 80% or so of coal is contained in the product extruded from leaf pellet making machine, 8% of moisture and 1.5% of ash. Stone, fines and other impurities that will cause damage and consume extra heat don’t exist or can be screened out easily, which will reduce depreciation rate of stoves/furnaces and increase burning efficiency of leaf pellets.
3. Safety: Apart from longer combusting time and better burning efficiency, leaves pellet is also a safer fuel. In the function of leaf pellet making machine, none of fire hazard, unclean pollutants from chimney and harm to human or animal health that may be caused by some unprocessed leaves will happen to leaf pellets.
Related production line: 800-1000 kg/h Straw Pellet Plant
