Pellet Burning Stoves
Pellet Stoves burn wood pellets. These stove pellets actually are recycled sawdust, wood shavings, corn, walnut and peanut shells, and similar biomass wastes that are ground up into small pellets, compressed and extruded for use in your stove.
The pellets range from 3/8-inch to 1-inch-long and look like rabbit feed, and they're sold in manageable 40-pound bags. Some pellet stoves are also designed to burn corn kernels, nutshells, and wood chip making your stove burn more efficiently.
Both because of a pellet stove's fuel's consistency and because of the stove's combustion mechanics, pellets burn very hot. This means they burn more efficiently and cleaner than wood. Intense compression squeezes the moisture out of pellets, dropping their moisture content to below 8%, which is very dry compared to cord wood that has from 20% to 30% moisture. The dryer the fuel, the more heat it can produce, and the high-temperature fire burns more of the fuel.
Compared to EPA-certified wood stoves that give off about 5 grams of particulates per hour, pellet stoves have very low particulate emissions, some far less than 1 gram per hour. Pellets also create much less ash than cord wood and give off far less creosote, a common wood stove and fireplace hazard that blackens glass doors and collects in chimneys, causing chimney fires. Southern Hearth & Patio in Chattanooga carries a wide selection of Pellet Stoves.
