Physical properties of wood pellets from a novel pelletising process

In this paper a novel pelletising process is described utilising one-axial compression. Compression tests of saw dust samples were conducted at different applied forces, moisture contents, process temperatures and hold up times using a compression cell powered by an Instron testing machine. Additionally the effect of heating in saturated and unsaturated atmosphere was studied. The densities of loaded and relaxed pellets and the tensile strengths of the compacts were used as quality criteria. Furthermore the pore size distributions of wood the pellets from the presented experiments were obtained by mercury porosimetry and compared to those of commercial wood pellets.