Wallpaper drying solutions : Feasibility study of a low temperature drying process

Abstract: The wallpaper company Duro Sweden AB, one of the most important Scandinavian wallpaper manufacturers, wants to decrease its energy use and costs and make its production more environmentally friendly. It implies changes in the key process energy use whom consists mainly by drying process using heat production from oil. The purpose of this project, studied by the consulting company Sweco Theorells AB, is to determine the feasibility of a change in the energy utilisation implemented to the most representative process to propose future solutions’ basis on the future energy question. The company use mainly two kind of energy, electricity with 1055MWh per year and oil with 1985MWh per year. The oil power consumption and cost represent respectively 65% and 73% of the global part. Several proposed changes with better energy efficiency are presented : use of district heating as a heat source, Infrared Drying, combination, etc; but due to the important rebate make by the Swedish government on the oil price, they are not currently viable to achieve. But the constant rise of the oil price could be sooner a strong incentive to make these improvals, strongly environmentaly friendly and power consumption reducer, economicaly viable in the long term.