Swedish perspective on wood fuel pellets for household heating: A modified standard for pellets could reduce end-user problems

The use of wood fuel pellets has increased significantly over the past few years, and since 2006 the households use the major part of the pellets available in Sweden. During the same period, the oil heating has decreased. Many former oil users that were used to almost maintenance-free heating systems now use pellets. Despite significant improvements of pellet quality and storage and burner equipment, there are still some problems that the household pellets user encounters. In this work, common end-user problems are identified. The cause of each problem, as well as whether a modified Swedish standard for pellets could reduce some of the problems encountered, is analysed. The results show that the most serious problems originate from the crumbling of pellets. We conclude that many of the problems could be avoided by modifying the Swedish standard, e.g., the quality parameters could be set using intervals instead of threshold values. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.