Industrial and agricultural processes often generate large amount of low value biomass waste. Examples are sawdust, waste planking, coconut shells and husks, rice husks, maize cobs and peanut shells. Many of these products have a low protein value and of no nutritional value to people or animals.
If left it open to oxidise and rot, the biomass decomposes and causes methane pollution which is more harmful than CO2. It can however be transformed into usable energy in solid, liquid or gas form using conversion technologies.
One of these conversion technologies is to dry, reduce and compress the by-product into pellet form. The compressed pellets are easy to store, transport and have a high calorific value.
The biomass pellets can be used for heating or for the generation of electricity.