Straw

Vesto +_ Switchgrass Pellets
Crispin Pemberton-Pigott, New Dawn Engineering, Roger Samson, REAP Canada, January 5,2008

Densified Canadian switchgrass pellets were burned in a VESTO (New Dawn Engineering) stove in the gasification mode.

Dear Grass Burners

Roger Samson was here today with Stephanie and he brought along a Mayon Turbo stove with rice husks and a big bag of switchgrass pellets.

We tried this 'fuel of the future' in the Vesto which first required putting a small sheet of newspaper at the bottom to keep the little pellets in, and second perforating the sheet to let in a least a small amount of primary air.

It was packed pretty tightly. The pellets are about 15 MJ per litre.

We lit it on top with a small wood fire and it got going nicely. It burned very much like a Vesto with the 'gasifier mode' engaged meaning that it ran with very little primary air getting through and a floating bed of flame perhaps 7 cm above the fuel. Very pretty.

The CO/CO2 ratio was stable at 2% and had no odour or visible smoke. I will get some picture posted and a movie with a description by Roger.

The flamefront was shallow, as Alex describes with wood pellets. Nothing really to add - it burned completely and gave off lots of heat.

Regards
Crispin

Switchgrass and Paper Fireballs at Stoves Camp
Tom Miles, August 2006

Fireball Switchgrass

Fireball Paper

Prairie Grass Pellet Energy
Joe King, Richard Nelson, Kansas State University 2000

An older site with missing links but good overall reference to pelletizing grasses.