Another project in Holland:
I would like to remind you that pellets were originally designed to dispose of unused sawdust from Scandinavian and Canadian sawmills (which was a good idea). With the success that we know, pellets must now be made from roundwood and are therefore an additional cause of forest harvesting. With the black pellets (biocoal), we cross a new stage by freeing ourselves from previous limits: distance of transport and quality of the raw material: as much to say that it is the door opened to all the excesses ...
From a commercial and social point of view, here are the consequences *: the cost of manufacturing black pellets is roughly identical to that of white pellets (actually brown, but because of the appearance of black, become white by contrast!), but the costs are distributed differently.
A significant cost is that of the investment of the roasting unit (+ operating costs): this price is absorbed on the whole downstream chain: fine and easy grinding possible with a simple hammer mill, easy pressing and energy-saving, storage and handling without constraints, transport optimized in terms of energy density / cost, easy substitutability in large coal-fired boilers and less bulk of the initial stock for lovers of pellet stoves (+ better autonomy of the hopper ).
Due to the number of pellet heaters, there is a considerable market for the sale of this product, a market built by the first installers and suppliers: the only thing left for new technology is to occupy this land by first occupants. This is very easy since the capital required for these roasting plants reserves them for financial groups. Smaller manufacturers, faced with higher manufacturing and supply costs, will not be able to struggle for long, especially since a bit of temporary dumping on prices can quickly make way for more.
* Warning! Prediction sequence!
