Justin Catanoso is no stranger to wood pellet plants, as he lives near four of them in the U.S. state of North Carolina, where biomass giant Enviva has several facilities. While that company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this year, it remains the single largest producer of wood pellets globally. This firm is one of […]
Well here’s a wrinkle: I’m a woodworker, a hobbyist at the moment but I’m thinking of starting to sell furniture. Even at a hobbyist level building a table every couple weeks, I can generate pickup truck full of sawdust in a year. I currently dispose of this by hauling it to a landfill. I know of at least one fuel pellet manufacturer that will buy sawdust and planer shavings. Which would you rather me do with my granular wood waste?
I am curious: Have you considered making your own fuel pellets? I have seen a few DIY projects to compress sawdust and am wondering if it would be cost effective for you build/buy a machine for it, s’all.
If you do start a formal business, paying a highschool kid to run the machine and do simple sales tasks might be feasible. (It’s not always financially viable, I get it. It would be interesting to do the math on it though…)
(I have no skin in the related discussion. I just smelled a business opportunity and was curious.)
Edit: If you happen to be in the US and near Colorado, I would be willing to try and put a machine together myself, actually. At least, do a preliminary CAD sketch up and see what the raw, underlying cost would be. Can you be a hair more accurate about the volume of sawdust you generate?
I didnt know there was such a thing!
It looks like a reverse coffee grinder, turning ground back into whole bits! It isn’t what I’d call cheap, but it could be interesting for the right person to do as a side hustle.
I have briefly looked into doing it myself, and it’s just not there near-term.
Not only do you need a pellet press, you need a hammer mill to make sure the sawdust is the correct consistency, and then there’s apparently also an ideal moisture content. I use kiln dried lumber so there may need to be some adjustment there…it’s a few thousand dollars of equipment, I have no personal need for wood pellets, so it would just be easier to find someone who is already in that line of work to sell or even give my grit to. Starting a business and
I smelled a business opportunity as well; because when I make a trip to the dump to haul out sawdust and offcuts and things like that, I pay about $10. If I could sell the same amount of sawdust for $10, I’m $20 up. It would be a way to turn an expense into an income.
I can’t be that accurate about the sawdust I generate for a few reasons: 1. I’m still working as a hobbyist for the moment, sometimes I go weeks without building anything, sometimes I build two tables at once. 2. Sometimes I build a bookcase out of plywood and it generates very little dust, sometimes I mill my own rough sawn oak and a single table makes a garbage bin full of shavings. 3. Some of my equipment gets used outdoors and I don’t bother gathering the chips (yet). It ends up blown into the woods behind my property. Last year I hauled 2 mostly full 200 gallon garbage cans of dust, chips, shavings and small scrap to the landfill.
You’re talking about disposing of a waste product, though. They’re talking about growing trees specifically to grind into sawdust.