Optimize Wood Drying Kilns
Optimize Wood Drying Kilns – Sawmills offer an excellent opportunity for steam optimization. Wood drying kilns (kilns) perform a critical role in the lumber manufacturing process. eSteamG offers a tried and demonstrated algorithm for balancing between performance, efficiency and reliability.
The typical kiln is a systems of steam coil air heaters, modulating zone controls, air fans, and moisture sensors to facilitate the art and science of drying a wide variety of species of wood. Traditionally, all of these systems used conventional steam traps, especially bucket traps. Many of these systems ganged several coils to a single trap as a cost saving measure.
Conventional traps are pulsing traps and will all fail over time. An alternative to conventional traps introduced at Hampton Lumber in 2003 at Morton Washington is the venturi trap. eSteamG has benefited from this history by participating in the implementation of venturis in 36 complete systems between 2003 and 2005. Through this process, the art of sizing the orifice of the venturi was perfected. The reported results of this introduction was an average of 10% improvement in charge time.
The magic of kiln optimization is primarily two-fold: 1) individually trapping each coil; 2) optimizing heat transfer in the coil by replacing pulsing traps with permanent venturis.
By eliminating short circuiting of ganged traps combined with eliminating the chaos introduced by pulsing conventional traps at various stages of deterioration (working , leaking, blowing, closed, out of service) with a system of optimally sized permanent venturis, heat transfer throughout all of the coils is maintained.
By eliminating short circuiting of ganged traps combined with eliminating the chaos introduced by pulsing conventional traps at various stages of deterioration (working , leaking, blowing, closed, out of service) with a system of optimally sized permanent venturis, heat transfer throughout all of the coils is maintained.
This allows more consistent drying which in turn enables the charge schedules to be favored toward the resulting tighter bell curve. The end result is a reduction in charge times by as much as 10% or alternatively a reduction in fuel by 10%.
eSteamG has a long history of mills that implemented this perfected sizing algorithm with permanent venturi systems in the Pacific Northwest. This includes several companies with multiple mills – Hampton, Boise, Plum Creek. This same system has been widely implemented by hundreds of other mills in the Atlantic South over the past fifteen years.
Benefitting from years of experience combined with new data from various applications in multiple industries, eSteamG continues to refine this sizing algorithm for optimal performance where maximum temperatures and increased throughput are desired.
Example of eSteamG Wood Drying Kiln Optimization – OnePager1 {link to a Hampton OnePager – Morton, Randle, Darrington?; RFP Dillard offered a low pressure demonstration kiln test protocol in 2004 – resulted in an energy savings rebate from Oregon State program – This lead to retrofitting the remaining 10 low pressure kilns in early 2005 and later in 2006 to optimizing two new medium pressure AWD kilns;}eSteamG White Paper on Wood Drying Kiln Optimization {link to White Paper(s)}