moisture content of wood pellet chips from irish supplier

beolight

hi all

whilst researching wood pellet boiler as an option to replace existing boiler, it seems that if you source boiler from austrian/german companies you may invalidate your warranty if you dont use wood pellets that are certified as suitable by the building standards people in germany/austria in relation to moisture content. if wood pellets used have a moisture content than those cerified as suitable it could cause problems with boiler such as condensation build up

please feel free to correct me if my information is wrong

i cant remember the irish supplier of wood pellets so i couldnt verify moisture content

also this will have implications for storage of bulk buy wood pellets

have the more experienced people in this area on the forum encountered this and what are their thoughts

patrido

that's interesting... the specs for austrian pellets are quite different to those made in ireland. I'm only familiar with the austrian standard, so I'm not sure about germany, sweden, etc.

the max moisture content in austria is 10% and balcas quote the same. however, as there is is no regulatory standard for this, there is nothing compelling them to keep manufacturing to this standard.

in any event, poor storage conditions resulting in excess moisture content is much more likely to wreck a boiler than a slight increase in the moisture content from the factory. i guess that anyone considering purchasing a pellet boiler should check with their manufacturer that using irish pellets will not invalidate the warranty.

i also noticed a few other significant differences between balcas pellets and the austrian standard...

- calorific value. The austrian standard specifies a minimum 18MJ/kg, while balcas is lower than this - 17MJ/kg.

- density. Austria: 1.12kg/dm3. Balcas: 650kg/m3 (or 0.65kg/dm3). This means that a tonne of balcas pellets needs 72% more storage space than a tonne of austrian pellets. this is why some storage options are working out almost as expensive as the boiler itself ! will it also mean an increase in ash produced?

so the big question from all of this is what will happen in the future. as we know, the eu loves standards, so they are quite likely to implement an eu-wide standard for the manufacture of pellets. so when irish manufacturers are forced to produce pellets to a standard as high as the austrian one, will our prices go up? are our prices artificially low at the moment due to them being inferior?

i do think pellets are much better value than oil, and more eco than heat pumps, but there are lots of questions and uncertainty.

beolight

looks like your research was a lot more comprehensive than mine:) patrido

the german manufacturer of the wood pellet boiler did say that they would only stand over their warranty in ireland if bagged pellets with austrian/german certification were used

still the way to go i think but storage will be critical

Alun

Just as a side note ... I know for a fact that in Germany if you have an open fire or wood burning stove then it has to be inspected every year. As part of that test they take a swab of the soot on the inside of the flue. This is tested, and from this they can tell if you've been burning anything nasty, including unseasoned wood. AFAIK it's not only the condensation that's the problem, but some kind of nasty chemical that potentially gets released into the atmospehere when burning wood that hasn't dried properly. If they find anything like this, you can get a hefty fine.