Not everyone knows much about wood pellet mills in the early years and how to make wood pellets at home. But these pellet mills have played an important role in modern-day biomass energy consumption.
Wood pellet mills have a great history behind them, but most of us pay no attention to them because of how common they have become. Most people think a wood pellet mill or pellet press is some kind of extrusion machine. But they don’t know it is a molding machine that shapes raw material.
If you are interested in how wooden pellet mills are indispensable to our modern economy and its history, read this article because we have mentioned some amazing facts about the evolution of pellets.
The appearance of First Wood Pellet Mill – 1900s
In the 1900s, every wood pellet mill came into a production line consisting of two rollers with the same form for molding purposes. Both of these rollers are covered with hemispherical grooves. These rollers rotate in opposite directions.
Pellet plants do not widely accept the first generation of wood pellet mill due to its small capacity and high energy consumption.
Development of Wood Pellet Mill – 1910
First-ever extrusion pellet mill was designed and developed by UK company Sizer in the early 1900s. This machine has become popular in the pellet manufacturing industry. The mechanism of this machine matches with the modern machine as you have to put raw material, helicoid conveyer belt moves this raw material forward, and you will get final extruded material coming out of the molding holes.
The invention of Schueler Pellet Mill – 1920
Using the compression concept, a gentleman named Schuyler invented the first Schueler pellet mill. Two rollers are used in its making that look like gears. These rollers extrude the raw material. The downside of the pellet mill is that this wood pellet mill can easily wear out, which makes it expensive compared to other pellet mills.
Ara of Flat Die Pellet Mill and Ring Die Pellet Mill
As technology evolves, wood pellet mills become more and more popular. This development successfully invented the flat die pellet mill, which improved productively. After some time, production line owners feel that the linear velocity of the flat die works differently in radial, which impacts the quality.
Due to this situation, some inventors started their research and finally made a ring die pellet mill, which consisted of a ring die with multiple holes on it and many rollers.
Modern Technology and Pellet Mill
People used new techniques and tried to make new pellet mills with great features as time passed. The European countries are top of the list as they established many wood pellet mills.
Following the footsteps of European countries, Chine also wrote its name in the history of wood pellet mill by developing a ring die pellet mill in 1970. After that, the working principle of the ring dies pellet mills become mature, and the shape remains the same. Researchers now only work on its manufacturing principle and technical performance over and over.
