Drying lumber is an expensive process but a Penn State researcher says the time and energy needed to dry a piece of wood may be dramatically reduced.
Charles Ray, a Pennsylvania State University assistant professor of forest resources, has devised a process to decrease the time needed to dry wood products.
Ray's process requires creation of an artificial intelligence program to analyze the environment inside a wood drying kiln. The program would monitor the kiln, compensating to minimize deviation from optimal drying conditions.
Current methods used to dry wood consume vast amounts of energy and can cause defects in the wood. Ray's says his AI process would decrease the amount of energy consumed in the drying process and the number of defects in the lumber.
The U.S. wood products industry is a $250 billion industry, with manufacturers spending up to 40 percent of production costs on energy consumption.
A research paper appears in the July issue of the journal Wood and Fibers Science
