DIEFFENBACHER has supplied a 120-meter-long flash tube dryer to the Laboratory for Wood Materials Technology at Rosenheim Technical University of Applied Sciences (TH Rosenheim) for its new research facility focused on drying and gluing hardwood fibers used to produce biopolymer-bound wood fiber insulation materials.
“Our new DIEFFENBACHER fiber dryer is specially designed for drying hardwood fibers and the use of biopolymers, i.e., adhesives made from renewable raw materials or residual materials. It will significantly accelerate our research,” explains Prof. Dr. Andreas Michanickl, Head of the Laboratory for Wood Materials Technology at TH Rosenheim. “This new facility more closely simulates the industrial process, which significantly improves the transferability of our research into practice. We’ll also be able to make more accurate predictions about the scalability of our research,” he says.
“The primary aim of our research is to provide, test and optimize a process technology that enables the production of innovative, competitive biopolymer-bound wood fiber insulation materials based on hardwood fibers,” reports Thomas Schmid, the university research assistant responsible for the project. “We expect these hardwood-based fiber insulation materials will be at least equivalent to softwood-based products but cheaper to produce,” he adds. The cost savings would come from the lower costs for the hardwood raw material and its lower moisture content, the lower electrical and thermal energy requirements for the production of fibers from hardwood and the optimized process technology.
The new drying system will be used to further optimize the production of wood fiber insulation materials and similar products. “Thanks to the great support from DIEFFENBACHER, we now have a globally unique complete plant for developing and testing wood fiber-based materials at TH Rosenheim,” Prof. Dr. Michanickl concludes.
