Straw is mostly cellulose, just like wood. That is why they have almost equal power density values: 4,49kWh/kg for the straw, versus 4,8 – 5 kWh/kg for wood. The volume density for the raw straw is pretty low, but when it is pelletized it is much higher.

<- Click on the image to view the laboratory analysis report

At the moment, straw pellets in Bulgaria are sold for 75-90 Eur. We believe, that this price should remain for the future, due to the fact, that a huge amount of straw is not utilized, and it is treated as waste. We know that only 3-5% of the produced straw is being utilized.

The straw ash melts at low temperature. This feature causes forming of slag blocks in the burning chamber. In a regular pellet burner, the slag cannot be removed without a human intervention. In a conventional burner, this can cause fire in the boiler room.

Since we are one of the pioneers, using straw as a fuel, it is not very popular in the market. At the moment, straw pellets are produced  mainly for barn flooring. We have to mention that the equipment for  producing straw pellets is the same  as the one for wooden pellets.

Yes, it is. It is a renewable energy source. If it takes tens of years to regenerate  wood, for  straw this process takes just one year.

Yes, you can install it on any boiler you wish. The burner is just a device, delivering fire. You can utilize it with any boiler, furnace, powder coating ovens, etc. Attention should be paid to the volume of the ash tray, since the agricultural pellets form big amounts of ash and slag.

Our patented design incorporates two pistons, cleaning the burning chamber and the space in the air delivery pocket under the chamber. This allows thorough cleaning before each ignition, as well as partial cleaning of a few inches of the burning chamber during the burning process. This allows the continuous pushing and expelling the slag blocks, without interrupting and compromising the burning process. Another important feature in our burning chamber is that it is made from 8mm thick steel. We use also  industrial grade components, which make our device very reliable.

Yes, you can use any pellets. Very often on the market you can find cheaper wood pellets, which  form slag and cause problems with the conventional burners. Thanks to our piston technology, the slag is not a problem in the MPE Bistra.

If you are intending to use straw or any other agricultural pellets (sunflower seed skins for example), the big ash tray will be very useful for you. Otherwise you will have to clean the ash quite often. We offer a separate ash tray, or ash tray+burning chamber, that can be fitted under your existing boiler. This way you will increase its efficiency and will prolong the interval between each ash cleaning. This approach is very often used with the die cast iron boilers.

The warranty is 3 years, and includes all kind of failures of any component of the device, when it is caused by proper usage.

We have a specially engineered heater element and the whole ignition process. Unlike the conventional pellet burners, which use hot air for the ignition, we  ignite the pellets by contact with the heating element. In this way, our heater element is working at a  much lower temperature. We have made tests, leaving the heater switched on for three months, 24 hours per day. The heater survived and is working on a pellet burner for a third season already.

Thanks to our patented piston design, this burner does not require any specific attention for cleaning. Instead of a using a photo sensor, we use a high temperature sensor. Thus it doesn’t matter if it is covered with ash. However, sometimes incidentally in the pellets there could be some objects like small pieces of stone, metal, etc. They can block the piston mechanism. In this case, human intervention is required (you need to pull back the piston in manual mode, and to manually remove the object from the burning chamber). We recommend greasing the piston screw once every 2-3 years. This will prolong the nut life, and prevent some unpleasant noise during piston movement.