Energy optimization for the operation of a sawmill

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

Bahía Blanca

Conferencia; International Conference of Production Research, ICPR 2020; 2020

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 fed with 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 opera-tion must be planned simultaneously. In this paper, these decisions are addressed through a mixed integer linear programming model (MILP) using state-task net-work concepts based on a discrete time formulation. Different work criteria relat-ed to sawmill operation are analysed, achieving very significant results for the performance of this industry.