Wood Pellet Specification
The specification is the key information that a supplier should give you about the wood pellets that they supply. This is not the actual content of a given load of wood pellets, but the quality that the supplier is guaranteeing that the wood pellets will exceed for each parameter.
The difference between specification and analysis of wood pellets
You should never compare one supplier's specification with another supplier's analysis. If a supplier quotes you the test results for a sample of his wood pellets and implies that this is a description of the quality of the pellets that will be supplied to you, you should ask whether that analysis represents the specification that the supplier is guaranteeing to exceed?
- If so, you should wonder how they can be sure that the sample analysed was the worst that they might ever encounter in the load (given the inevitable, modest variability in pellet-quality). You may conclude that they are either knaves or fools.
- If not, you should ask what specification they are prepared to guarantee.
This also highlights why it is meaningless to ask for or provide a sample of wood pellets for a customer to assess. Those particular pellets may be fine for the intended use, but they provide no assurance to the customer that future pellets will match their quality. What matters is the specification that a supplier will guarantee (and the substance of that guarantee), not the quality of a sample that may (by chance or by design) not be representative of the wood pellets subsequently supplied.
Indicative specifications within the standards for solid biomass fuels
Recent drafts of EN 14961 set out three indicative specifications that producers and suppliers may choose to define their wood pellets in accordance with: A1, A2 and B. Prior to that, the German standards institute, DIN, set out an ordinary (for industrial use), and then a superior specification (DINplus), often used to define the wood-pellet quality required by German pellet boilers. Likewise, ÖNorm (the Austrian Standards Institute) set out a specification that is required by many Austrian wood-pellet boilers, within their M7135 standard for wood pellets. And the Swedish standards institute (SIS) did something similar.
Specifications are not dictated by the standards
There is nothing to oblige wood-pellet producers or suppliers to adopt any of these specifications. They are perfectly entitled to set out their own specifications, and can do so whilst being fully compliant with the standards. But if they do, they place a greater burden on customers to determine whether their specification is adequate for their boiler. The natural tendency should be towards standardisation on the recommended specifications, to make the choice of fuel as easy for wood-pellet customers as it is for drivers. You do not have to go to a particular chain of garages to get a specification of fuel that works with your vehicle, and you should not have to go to a particular wood-pellet supplier to get a specification of fuel that works with your boiler.
Tendency towards the standardisation of wood-pellet specifications
EN 14961 is intended to supersede the national standards and specifications, allowing manufacturers of equipment and of wood pellets to standardise on specifications that should gradually become more common across Europe.
Because many boiler manufacturers at this time still refer to DINplus or ÖNorm, and because our producers are able to achieve a sufficiently high standard to comply with the top specifications within the various standards, Forever Fuels' specification for premium-quality wood pellets is chosen to comply with the A1 spec in EN 14961, and DINplus and ÖNorm.
