ongoing
California forests are in need of intense management. Forest communities and small businesses relying on forests for their livelihood can support sustainable forest management efforts to minimize the risk of wildfires. However, since the 1980s, the capacity of California sawmills has been halved.
Kiln drying or drying is an important added value to forest products, up to double the non-dried value. Furthermore, kiln-drying for construction lumber and engineered wood products can be responsible for up to 92% of their embodied energy. Current kiln designs can be either difficult to afford, or difficult to operate for small sawmill operations. We propose a low-carbon, low-cost, and high-performance solar kiln design to support small sawmill businesses in California. In the long term, the modeling and design effort of this research will be transferred to larger sawmill and drying operations.
Funded by U.S. Forest Service Wood Innovation Grant 2022