Wood Pellet Production: With a Rotary Dryer or Belt Dryer?

Air quality is an important factor in environmental health. The better the air quality, the better the environmental quality. Maintaining clean air quality is sometimes not something that is easy and cheap, especially for industry players. The higher the air quality standard used, the greater the effort and cost incurred.

In the wood pellet industry as an example, especially in the use of dryer. Almost all wood pellet industries in Asia use rotary dryer and almost none use belt dryer. Meanwhile, in Europe belt dryers are widely used because of lower emission than rotary dryers. In addition, belt dryers also have higher efficiency and can work at lower temperatures than rotary dryers. With a number of these advantages, however, belt dryer are also more expensive compared with rotary dryer.

Basically, rotary dryer can also have good performance, especially in terms of emissions if they are designed and operated properly. The use of high-efficiency dust collectors such as cyclones and bag filters can achieve high emission quality standards. However, the higher the efficiency of the dust collector, the higher the power required.

So the choice used actually depends on the expected air emission target. Europe and US/Canada generally have higher air quality standards than countries in Asia. This makes the emission aspect an important concern for them. Meanwhile, in terms of wood pellet production, the priority aspect is efficiency, so that with good performance the dryer can produce dry wood powder product that are suitable for feeding into pelletiser. The quality of the wood pellets as the final result is also very dependent on the quality of the dry powder product from the dryer. Meanwhile, in terms of safety, the high concentration of dust particles so that they can accumulate in a number of places in the wood pellet factory also has a greater potential for fires to occur.

Wood Pellet Export Opportunities
The lack of supply of wood pellets in Europe due to the Russia-Ukraine war caused wood pellet producers from Southeast Asia and North America to try to seize this opportunity. Production of wood pellets from Russia is estimated at around 3 million tonnes/year which previously filled the European market is now banned, so as a result of this ban the stocks of wood pellets in Europe have decreased drastically. The large demand and lack of supply will naturally push up prices, especially when coupled with increases in other energy commodities, so that the price of wood pellets continues to increase. In fact, because of the high price of wood pellets in Europe, wood pellets from Vietnam, which previously planned to be exported to Japan, were diverted to Europe.

It is also predicted that this uncertain condition will not recover in a short time. In 2021 Europe leads the production of wood pellets with production reaching nearly 20 million tons or around 48% of global production, while consumption of wood pellets reaches 24.5 million tons. Meanwhile, according to Hawkin Wright's data for 2020-2021, the growth in global demand for wood pellets has reached 18.4%, while supply or production growth is only 8.4%. Indonesia should have a great opportunity to become a major wood pellet player with its potential. The wood pellet production can be exported to Europe to cover the shortage of supply and in general to meet global demand.