EFS AND THE ENVIRONMENT
One of the largest single energy consumers in the world today is for manufacturing-drying of commodities including timber, food, fruit and a massive range of other products that we consume every day. The following information provides a guide to the environmental and global implications of the remarkable and innovative solar drying technology involved in our process.
Using empirical solar data for a less than ideal Melbourne climate, the following details provide a layman’s understanding of the solar energy created and saved by our outstanding technology that remains currently exclusive to Australian Choice Timber Supplies and EFS. This information may assist readers and potential investors to understand the sheer extent of the major competitive advantage and profitability the enterprise will enjoy along with the global significance of the technology.
The simple and inexpensive plastic solar collectors on a very small “solarola” kiln with capacity of 30 cubic metres of sawn timber, equivalent to only around 6 houselots of timber flooring in each batch, produces an average of 930 kw/hrs of solar heat energy per day or 330, 000 kw/hrs per year.
This is equivalent to the average annual electricity consumption of 46 Australian houses consuming an average 20 kw of electricity per day. A SINGLE large commercial solarola kiln unit captures 4.2 million kw/hrs of energy per year, equivalent to that of the consumption of 610 Australian households. Uruguay’s forecast increase in sawn timber availability over the next few years, small by total world standards and equivalent to 1% of current annual usage would require over 900 of our larger drying kilns.
Greenhouse CO2 gas savings from a single large scale commercial kiln unit are around 4,300 tonnes of gas per year. To put the global significance in partial perspective, one needs to understand that commercial drying represents one of the world’s largest energy consumers and contributors to ozone depletion and greenhouse warming. The world’s enormous timber production is growing exponentially to meet world needs. China alone consumes approximately 240 million cubic metres of lumber per year, a volume that would consume around 93 million megawatt hours of heating energy to dry. This is the equivalent electricity consumption of 13 million average Australian domestic households which, if produced in coal fired power stations would produce 131 million tonnes of greenhouse gases. If this same amount of timber were to be high temperature dried, as IS THE CASE for a significant part of it, the energy consumption and greenhouse gas emission estimates are more than double the above, staggering amounts.
At the same time, the technology delivers substantial quality and product value gains to increase bottom line performance! WIN, WIN, WIN!
World energy needs for drying timber alone is absolutely enormous. Energy used for drying a massive range of consumer products is literally mind-blowing.
