FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS
Some important areas of research and development to look out for:
- Measuring moisture content during drying in the past has been difficult and imprecise. Researchers are constantly improving sensing equipment to meet the demand for equipment that gives useful indications of moisture content during drying, with accurate endpoint determination.
- Better in kiln sensors allow drying simulators running concurrent to the drying process to sense, predict and control drying parameters to optimise operational performance. Simulations allow controllers to sense wood parameters, rather than environment parameters, to control drying. This has particular importance to appearance grade drying.
- Continuous dryers that control drying for individual pieces and bring each board to the same end point moisture content sequentially give the best control of wood variation. Continuous drying processes have not been developed to production status, however, it can be argued that this type of drying is essential to precise drying results.
- Microwave drying is among the emerging alternatives to convection wood drying kilns. It has the advantage of selectively applying heat to the wood mass and acting through a whole thickness. In theory, microwaves could control many degrade affects that occur in convection systems but this technology remain unproven.
