Energy optimization for the operation of a sawmill

VANZETTI, NICOLÁS; STEITZER, NESTOR; MONTAGNA, JORGE M.; CORSANO, GABRIELA

Bahía Blanca (online)

Conferencia; International Conference of Production Research; 2020

International Foundation of Production Research

The wood drying is an important stage in the production process of the 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 operation must be planned simultaneously. In this paper, these decisions are addressed through a mixed integer linear programming model (MILP) using state-task network concepts based on discrete time formulation. Different work criteria related to sawmill are analyzed, achieving very significant results for the performance of this industry