Wood pellet production line in Bangladesh

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Own sawdust is the base supply rather than a full-shift guarantee

The company’s sawmill is reported to generate 150–200 tonnes of sawdust per month. That can support a useful pellet programme, but it should not be confused with enough material to run a 2–2.5 T/H press continuously. Before buying extra equipment, the owner needs to know how many of those tonnes are suitable wood and how much water they contain.

• Measure usable sawdust separately from the total workshop collection.
• Check monthly wood supply against the intended pellet-running hours.
• Define the buyer’s pellet size, moisture and fuel requirements.
• Add outside sawmills only after checking their wood and contamination levels.

The first email arrived on July 3, 2023, asking about machine capacity, price and a complete wood pellet line. For this customer, the best answer starts with a material sample and a supply record. A larger press does not help if the available sawdust is too wet or the prepared-wood store empties halfway through the shift.

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Rubber wood and mango wood need consistent preparation

This mixed wood pellet plant in Bangladesh uses rubber wood, mango wood and other sawmill residues. The proportions can vary with timber orders, so the line should be assessed with representative mixed samples. Bark content, particle size and contamination are more useful design information than a fixed species percentage that may not hold through the year.

Check the material before it enters storage

Receiving item	Practical decision
Mixed rubber and mango wood	Sample the actual mixture
Sawing residues	Check for grit and metal
Furniture residues	Exclude painted wood and unsuitable boards
Bark	Control the share and check fuel suitability
Moisture	Measure each incoming supply lot

A shed keeps rain out but does not replace a dryer

The incoming sawdust is described at roughly 25–30% moisture in drier periods and up to 45% in the rainy season. Both conditions need drying before this pellet route. Sheltered storage can prevent further soaking and make handling easier, but it cannot be credited with reaching the required pressing moisture within a fixed number of hours.

• Keep wet incoming wood apart from dried material.
• Use a drained receiving area instead of collecting wood from muddy ground.
• Measure moisture inside the load as well as at its surface.

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Dry the wood before asking the pellet press to shape it

The wet sawdust pellet line in Bangladesh follows this route: receiving → screening and metal separation → suitable grit removal → size preparation where needed → drying → final grinding if required → prepared-wood holding → pelleting → cooling → screening → packing. The heat supply and dryer are part of making this wet feed usable, not optional accessories to the press.

Remove grit with equipment suited to the material

At the inlet of the wood biomass pellet production line, coarse screening and magnetic separation do different jobs. Magnets can remove suitable ferrous pieces, but they do not remove sand or every type of metal. Grit separation needs equipment selected for the wood’s particle size and moisture; a fan motor rating alone does not establish that separation will work.

Task	Equipment function	Limit to remember
Coarse screening	Separate oversize pieces and debris	Select aperture from actual feed
Magnetic separation	Remove suitable ferrous contamination	Does not remove sand
Grit removal	Separate heavy mineral contamination	Wet fine wood needs appropriate equipment

Size the dryer by water removal as well as feed weight

The example below starts with clean wet wood after foreign material has been removed. It assumes a target of 2.5 T/H of pellets at 10% moisture, a dryer outlet at 12%, and no external loss of dry wood. Those are engineering calculation assumptions, not measurements from an operating trial. All moisture figures are on a wet basis: water divided by total material weight.

Illustrative flow	At 30% inlet moisture	At 45% inlet moisture
Clean wet wood entering	3.214 T/H	4.091 T/H
Dry wood in every stage	2.250 T/H	2.250 T/H
Dryer outlet at 12% moisture	2.557 T/H	2.557 T/H
Water removed in dryer	0.657 T/H	1.534 T/H
Pellets at 10% moisture	2.500 T/H	2.500 T/H

Cool, grade and pack the actual finished quantity

At the rainy-season example condition, the dryer removes about 1.53 tonnes of water each hour. A further 0.057 T/H leaves between the prepared-wood stage and the finished pellets. That second change is allowed for in the press-and-cooler balance; it does not justify sending 45%-moisture wood directly into the press.

• Cool pellets before closing bags, using the actual intake-air conditions.
• Screen the cooled product and return clean fines to a compatible wood batch.
• Keep cooling, screening and bagging connected during a sustained run.

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Keep other biomass out of the first wood-fuel recipe

Rice husk, bagasse and jute residues may be available to the business, but none is a direct substitute for clean sawdust. Each changes preparation, wear, ash behaviour or the finished-fuel specification. The first production programme is easier to learn when it starts with a defined wood mixture instead of several untested materials.

Potential material	What changes
Rice husk	Ash, abrasion and buyer acceptance
Sugarcane bagasse	Fibre preparation and drying load
Jute residues	Cutting, grinding and fuel testing
Coconut shell	Hard-material preparation; not automatic charcoal production

Water-rich aquatic plants are especially unsuitable as an easy rainy-season cost-saving ingredient: they bring another drying load and a new fuel composition. Adding used cooking oil is not a substitute for controlling wood moisture either. The wood-fuel programme should remain a known mixture until any additional material has been separately assessed with the intended buyer.

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Use one press with enough capacity for the target

An MZLH678 is the appropriate starting size for the requested output: a single press driven by a 200 kW main motor, with a 2.5–3 T/H reference range for wood. To use that capacity, the site has to keep dry, prepared material flowing into it. The dryer and wet-wood handling therefore deserve as much attention as the press.

Duty	Engineering selection
Receiving and cleaning	Screening, magnets and suitable grit separation
Drying	Dryer with matched heat source
Final size reduction	Wood grinder matched to dry prepared feed
wood pellet mill	One MZLH678; 200 kW main motor
Cooling and screening	Matched load including internal circulation
Packing	Complete bagging and handling route

The site arrangement should make rainy-weather handling straightforward:

• Set machine levels from the drainage and floor survey, rather than a fixed plinth height.
• Use suitable motor enclosures and keep their cooling paths open.
• Leave access to remove collected grit, inspect screens and replace wear parts.

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Put the monthly sawdust figure into a production plan

To show what the reported 150–200 tonnes per month could mean, take an illustrative incoming moisture of 30% and finished pellets at 10%. With no dry-wood loss, every tonne received becomes about 0.778 tonnes of pellets. Dirt, unsuitable pieces and actual process losses would reduce that result further.

Monthly example at 30% moisture	150 tonnes received	200 tonnes received
Dry wood available	105.0 tonnes	140.0 tonnes
Pellets at 10% moisture	116.7 tonnes	155.6 tonnes
Productive hours at 2.5 T/H	46.7 hours	62.2 hours

At a net finished rate of 2.5 T/H, that monthly example represents roughly 47–62 productive hours. Start-up, cleaning and maintenance take additional time. The owner can schedule campaigns around that supply or buy more qualified wood; the monthly total alone does not support an assumption of continuous full-shift production.

Outside supply should be agreed by both quantity and material condition. Two trucks of equal weight may bring different amounts of dry wood when one load has absorbed rain. Recording received weight and moisture gives the business a better purchasing basis and helps avoid planning pellet orders around water rather than wood.

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Make packing the same size job as production

The bagging station needs a repeating cycle: position the bag, weigh the pellets, close it and move it clear before the next one arrives. Manual bag placement can remain part of the arrangement, but weighing, closing, lifting and removal need to work together. A low purchase price for a scale does not establish the output of a complete packing station.

• Keep bag storage and the packing area away from wet incoming material.
• Provide covered storage for finished bags before dispatch.
• Agree how pallets or bag stacks will be removed while packing continues.

Complete packing duty	At 2 T/H	At 2.5 T/H
25 kg bags	80 bags/hour	100 bags/hour
50 kg bags	40 bags/hour	50 bags/hour

The daily production target should stop at what the full line can handle. If the bag station falls behind, a buffer buys time but eventually fills. The useful trial is therefore a sustained run through cooling, screening and packing, rather than a short measurement at the press outlet.

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From first enquiry to the March contract

Date	Project step
July 3, 2023	First email enquiry
September 2023	Customer representative visited RICHI
January 2024	Purchase financing arranged
March 11, 2024	Equipment contract signed

The enquiry-to-contract period allowed the customer to examine the equipment and arrange the purchase. It does not establish a later operating rate, a particular fuel test result or the number of staff needed on site. Those figures should come from trials and the final handling arrangement.

What to establish during a representative trial

• Use a representative mixed-wood batch with its incoming moisture recorded.
• Measure dryer inlet, outlet and water-removal duty.
• Weigh accepted cooled pellets and identify returned fines separately.
• Run packing long enough to expose a bag-handling bottleneck.

For a wood pellet production line in Bangladesh using wet sawdust, send RICHI the monthly supply, seasonal moisture range, wood samples and required pellet size. Add the available heat source, electrical supply and preferred bag weight. Those details determine a workable drying duty and a realistic production schedule.

This Chittagong project is most useful to another timber business facing the same question: how much bagged fuel can its own wet residues support? Answer that first, then match the dryer, one suitable press and the packing arrangement to the result.