25Apr
One of our clients had a problem with dust in their pellets and the auger was struggling to deliver the fuel correctly. Having determined why the dust was present we set about clearing the intermediate hopper, the transport auger and the collection box of the main store. Armed with a dustpan and a powerful vacuum cleaner we cleared away all of the troublesome dust – plus a lot of perfectly good pellets. It wasn’t absolutely the cost of the pellets that worried us (about £15 worth) but we just couldn’t bear to throw away such useful stuff. The only problem was, how do you separate the dust from the pellets?
Gardeners know best
Inspired by the gardening technique of separating fine earth from stones, we sought out a soil sieve (or riddle) with 6mm holes in the mesh. This was just the right size to let the dust fall through but leave the decent pellets on the top of the mesh. Like panning for gold, we worked our way through the pile and soon had all of the good pellets bagged up and the dust (a much smaller quantity now) collected in a large builders bucket. The pellets were returned to their rightful owner leaving us wondering what we could do with a couple of kilograms of wood dust. Our best guess currently, is to return the favour and add them to our gardener’s compost heap where they should rot down nicely providing fuel for the next set of vegetable. After all, this is a renewable business.