Biomass and Pellet production Plants

The word Biomass means the biodegradable fraction of products, waste and residues having biological origin coming from agriculture (including vegetal and animal substances), forestry and related industries including fisheries and aquaculture, as well as the biodegradable fraction of industrial and municipal waste. The biomass produced from forests and originated from wood and waste wood are also a renewable energy source.

This biomass can be seen as a stored solar energy accumulated during growth by means of photo-synthesis of chlorophyll. While burning fossil fuels produces and accumulates in the atmosphere carbon removed from underground, combustion of biomass does not increase the greenhouse effect, because the carbon emitted during the wood burning is the same removed from the atmosphere by the plant itself during its life. The whole process is therefore neutral and having zero or little impact on the environment.

To use biomass as fuel, the following products can be considered :

• Firewood logs or branches, mainly coming from the rational and sustainable use of forests;

• Wood chips, produced using the waste from pruning and maintenance of forests;

• Pellets, tablets of milled and pressed wood, generally made with scraps from wood processing industry.

Currently, Italian biomass fired plants contribute for less than 2% to energy needs. The cost of energy from plant biomass is much lower than fossil fuels plants, thus allowing a considerable operational saving and allowing in many cases a fast payback.

Restag proposes pelletization plants, consisting in a process made of several stages to convert raw material in pellets, each one optimized for the production process. The complete pelletization line starts from receiving the raw material in form of logs and then proceeding according to the following stages:

• Chipping: reduction from logs or branch size to wood chips;

• Grinding: reduction of wood chips dimensions to a maximum size of 60/80 mm;

• Drying: dehydration of the raw material in order to achieve a humidity between 8 and 12%;

• Storage: storage of dried raw material;

• Refining: reduction of the material dimension to the size of sawdust;

• Storage: storage of sawdust for loading pelletizing equipment;

• Loading: transport system for a proper sawdust loading in the pelletizing equipment;

• Pelletizing: pellet production with specialized machines;

• Transportation of pellets: conveyor belts transporting pellets to the packaging;

• Screening: cleaning and cooling of pellets;

• Packaging : in bags or big bags in manual or automatic mode;

• Palleting : automatically creating transport pallets;