Day 2- Pellets,Sawmills, and Molding

The first place we visited was a pellet making factory that made Haimer's Hot Ones.  The factory was started because their company had a saw mill that had to have their sawdust cleaned up because it is enviromental waste.  It cost them 1 million dollars to clean it up.  They did not want to pay that bill again so instead they came up with an ingeius idea.  They decided to go into the pellet business. This not only solved their problem of what to do with their waste, but it created a new product they could sell (the pellets).

 The process Starts by trucking in sawdust. The sawdust comes from their sawmill and sawdust they buy from other sawmills.It takes 30000 tons to make 15000 tons of pellets. It is divided by species of wood. Then it is dried at about 1800 degrees depending on the species. 

The sawdust then goes into the factory and is heated to the melting point of the lignin in the wood. The lignin holds the pellet together. The melted sawdust is squeezed through a machine kind of like playdough (see picture to the right of the opened machine). The new pellets then drop down into bin below (Picture to left)

Next the pellets (machines make 100-180 tons a day) are bagged. Every 50 bags are checked to make sure that there is no more than 3.2 percent dust.  If there is more they slow down machine and that takes care of problem. Next it is sent down to the machine in the video that puts bags on pallets (pallet weighs 2000 lbs). This machine loads 20 tons per hour while workers could load 10 tons and workers kept quitting or tranfering to other jobs. Next a machine wraps it in plastic and the process is done. It is great that we are finding ways to use the waste in an economical way.