“A tonne of briquettes has about the same energy as a cord of seasoned firewood and occupies about half the space.”

Wood Energy: The Challenge and the Opportunity by George Jenkins, Wood Science and Technology Centre, UNB.

Over 8 million barrels of oil energy equivalent is displaced in North America with pellet fuel annually.”  

Fuel Pellets Institute.

In some markets across southern Ontario, the recent increase in demand for firewood has made it a challenge for many landowners who want a reliable source of fuel to meet their winter heating needs. To add to this challenge, prices for firewood are increasing, partly due to the supply and demand issue, but also due to higher logging costs (e.g., fuel, labour, insurance, etc.).

As more people become interested in biofuels to run our cars, produce electricity and heat our homes, densified wood products are becoming a more viable option for home heating.

Most people are familiar with wood pellets being used as a heating source. They have been around for a number of years and their popularity continues to grow in Europe and North America.  Pellets are a densified wood product (typically measuring 1/4–1/3 inches round by 1/2–1 inches in length), burned in a specially designed stove.

However, another densified wood product, briquettes, is also becoming popular in the marketplace.  Briquettes are made of compressed wood but are larger then wood pellets. As the name suggests, they are usually briquette shaped but they are also produced in the form of round cylinder logs (e.g., 2”– 4” in diameter by 12”–18” in length).  One of the benefits of briquettes is that they can be burned in a conventional wood stove, fireplace, campfire or a larger furnace.

Briquettes (or cylinder logs) are made from natural wood residue by pressing wood into a die at high pressure.  They are held together by the binders (lignin) naturally present in the wood and generally contain 5–8% moisture content.  Briquettes are made of 100% wood by-products such as sawdust, shavings, chips or bark.

Table 1 compares the cost of purchasing briquette fuel to the costs of conventional wood sources (purchasing a cut/split face cord and also cutting your own).  When all the factors are considered, the costs of heating with briquettes are quite favourable compared to the costs of heating with traditional firewood.

Some of the benefits of using densified wood products (such as pellets or briquettes) include: convenient to use, clean burning, low ash output, uniform moisture content resulting in a constant heating value, no insects, less storage space and less mess.

Will densified wood products replace traditional firewood harvested from local woodlots?  Not likely.  People who own a woodlot have access to a secure and affordable source of firewood. Also, for many woodlot owners, cutting firewood is part of their passion of owning and managing a woodlot.  However, the market growth in Europe and in parts of North America is showing that there is an increasing demand for these new products. Time will tell how large of a market share densified wood products will capture; likely there will be room and demand for both.

© 2008 Ontario Woodlot Association