Industrial Heat Pump-Assisted Wood Drying

Vasile Minea is a PhD graduate of civil, industrial and agricultural installation engineering faculty from the Bucharest Technical Construction University, Romania. He worked as a professor at that university for more than 15 years, teaching courses such as HVAC systems for civil, agricultural, and industrial buildings, as well as thermodynamics, heat transfer, and refrigeration. During this period, his R&D works focused on heat exchangers, heat pump and heat recovery systems, and development and experimentation of advanced compression-absorption/ resorption heat pumps concepts, as well as on the usage of solar energy for comfort cooling processes and industrial cold and ice production. Since 1987, Dr. Minea has been working as a scientist researcher at the Hydro- Québec Research Institute, Canada. His research activity mainly focuses on commercial and industrial refrigeration, heat recovery and geothermal heat pump systems, low-enthalpy power generation cycles, and heat pump drying. During the past 15 years, he collaborated with the Canadian and American heat pump drying industry and R&D drying community in developing laboratory- and industrial-scale experimental prototypes. Drying of various products such as vegetables, agricultural, biological products, and wood has been theoretically and experimentally studied and results have been published in several drying conference proceedings and in prestigious journals such as Drying Technology, International Journal of Refrigeration, Applied Thermal Engineering, and IEA Heat Pump Centre Newsletter .

1. Introduction 2. Wood 3. Moisture in Wood 4. Moist Air 5. Importance of Wood Drying 6. Wood Drying Methods 7. Mechanisms of Lumber Drying 8. Kiln-Wide Lumber Drying 9. Heat Pump-Assisted Wood Dryers 10. Heat Pump Systems for Drying 11. Refrigerants 12. Heat Exchangers without Phase Changes 13. Moisture Condensers 14. Refrigerant-to-Air Condensers 15. Heat Pump Modeling 16. Case Studies 17. Present and Future R&D Challenges