Sara Florisson

More Effective Drying of Sawn Timber

To achieve an energy neutral construction industry, a more efficient use of energy and a wider use of renewable energy sources is needed. This requires the use of construction materials that have a low carbon footprint and a renewable character, such as wood. However, the stage in the production line of sawn timber that requires most energy is the drying process. It is recently reported that Swedish sawmills can dry sawn timber considerably quicker using shorter empirically customized drying schedules without compromising the timber’s quality. The drying schedules are shorter than the drying schedules currently predicted with the available drying models, and lead to less energy consumption, fewer costs, and a more sustainable drying industry. The aim of the postdoctoral research is to develop a finite element model that can give a better description of the physical phenomena encountered during the drying of sawn timber and can contribute to the understanding of the shorter empirically customized drying schedules.