Energy Optimization for the Operation of a Sawmill

VANZETTI, NICOLÁS; STEITZER, NÉSTOR; CORSANO, GABRIELA; MONTAGNA, JORGE MARCELO

Production Research. Communications in Computer and Information Science

Springer

Lugar: Cham; Año: 2021; p. 71 - 84

The wood drying is an important stage in the production process of a sawmill since it is where lumber acquires the level of humidity required by the market. Generally, it is a batch process that is carried out in dryers that operate in parallel out of phase. To cover the energy needs of the process, boilers fedwith the by-products generated in the productive stages of the sawmill are used. To operate efficiently, the filling and scheduling of the dryers and the boiler feed and operation must be planned simultaneously. In this paper, these decisions are addressed through amixed integer linear programming model (MILP) using statetask network concepts based on a discrete time formulation. Differentwork criteria related to sawmill operation are analysed, achieving very significant results forthe performance of this industry.