Corn Stalk Pellet Production Line — New Order for Biomass Fuel Project in Romania

RICHI Machinery has received a new order for a 5.5 t/h corn stalk pellet production line, to be installed at a site in Romania's agricultural heartland, where corn is among the most widely grown crops and corn stalk residue has historically been either burned in fields (a practice facing increasing regulatory restriction across parts of the EU) or left to decompose, representing an underutilized biomass resource that this biomass pellet project aims to convert into a fuel pellet product.

Corn stalk as a pelletizing feedstock shares some characteristics with wheat straw (discussed in relation to the Ukraine project) but also has its own particular handling considerations — corn stalks are generally bulkier and less uniform in size and moisture content than straw, since stalks include both the drier upper portions and somewhat moister lower stalk and root-zone material, depending on harvesting equipment and how cleanly the harvest separates stalk from soil-contact areas.

This variability in incoming material means the line includes a more robust pre-cleaning stage than some biomass pellet production lines — a screening step ahead of the main grinding process to remove soil and stone contamination that can be present in corn stalk residue collected from fields, particularly material from the lower stalk sections that may have more soil contact during harvesting and collection.

Equipment includes the pre-cleaning screen mentioned above, a shredder for initial size reduction of the bulky stalk material (corn stalks are generally too bulky for direct hammer mill feeding without this intermediate step), hammer mill, drum dryer (corn stalk moisture can range fairly widely, from 15% up to 30%+ depending on the portion of stalk and harvest timing, so the dryer needs to handle this variability), ring die biomass pellet mill, and cooler.

Target pellet output is 8mm diameter, for the biomass fuel market — Romania has growing biomass energy demand both domestically and as part of broader EU renewable energy targets that create market pull for biomass fuel products from agricultural residue sources.

The order includes a request from the buyer for RICHI Machinery to provide operational guidance documentation specifically addressing how to identify and manage the pre-cleaning screen's output (the rejected soil/stone material) — since this is byproduct material the buyer needs a disposal or reuse plan for, separate from the main pellet production process, and RICHI's documentation will include general guidance on this based on similar projects, though the buyer will need to determine their own specific disposal arrangement locally.

Manufacturing timeline is estimated at 7-8 weeks from order confirmation.