Performing Department
FORESTRY & NATURAL RESOURCES
Non Technical Summary
As furniture production continues to move to China, domestic lumber consumption has decreased. By the end of 2004, 2 billion board feet of hardwood lumber demand or about 14 percent of the domestic hardwood lumber market has disappeared compared to 1998 (Barrett 2004). Even though China imported 710 million board feet of American hardwood lumber in 2003, this import level falls far short of the 2 billion board feet domestic demand that has disappeared. Obviously, other countries have supplied China with some of the hardwood lumber used to manufacture the furniture exported to the U.S. Based on statistics from the 1997 Census of Manufactures (USDC Bureau of Census 1999) and Annual Survey of Manufacturers between 1998 and 2001 (USDC Bureau of Census 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003), for every $1 million decrease in lumber shipments, roughly 4.6 jobs were lost in the sawmill industry. A loss of 2 billion board feet in domestic lumber demand is conservatively estimated to be worth $1 billion and would translate into 4,600 lost jobs. To regain some of these lost jobs, American producers must capture a larger share of the Chinese market which requires that American sawmills employ advanced technology to produce a better quality product at a lower cost. Yet, American sawmills are no different from their major competitors in Canada, Europe, China and even Southeast Asia. In softwood sawmills, currently, a log profile scanner acquires data on the external shape of the log and computer software determines the sawing solution that maximizes the volume, rather than the value, of lumber produced. In hardwood sawmills, currently, logs are still cut manually by sawyers based on their past experience. Consequently, these sawmills capture only a portion of the value that could be realized from sawing the log. However, with the availability of an X-ray CT log scanner, the situation mentioned above could change both dramatically and quickly. Coupling the images acquired from log scanning with the TOPSAW (Chang and Guddanti 1993, 1995, Guddanti and Chang 1998, Chang and Pasala 2003) sawing optimization software already developed at the Advanced Sawing Technology Laboratory at Louisiana State University Agricultural Center it would then be possible to saw around the internal defects such as knots, decays, splits, and wormholes to maximize the value of lumber recovered and increase the profit at the mill level. For the sawmill industry the proposed project will strengthen the global competitiveness of the sawmill industry. For the consumers, they get better quality lumber and finally, for the nation as a whole, improved lumber recovery would enhance the conservation of the forest resource.
Animal Health Component
20%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
20%
Developmental
80%
Goals / Objectives
The overall goal of the Hardwood Scanning Center is to increase the global competitiveness of the United States hardwood industry and conserve the hardwood resource through increased conversion efficiency. We aim to accomplish this goal through development of technologies which will enable hardwood industry to see inside a tree and use this information to make better sawing decisions. The specific objective of this proposal is to acquire the log scanner from MiCROTEC GmbH with funding from federal, state, and industrial sources. As such, the proposed project will provide the enabling technology to greatly increase the value of the logs cut and enhance the global competitiveness of the hardwood sawmill industry in the United States For the hardwood sawmill industry, this increase could add roughly $2.4 billion in value per year to harvested hardwood logs.
Project Methods
An X-ray CT log scanner must be fast, acquiring multiple scanning images per second, strong, capable of handling logs of over 2000 pounds, durable, lasting for years, powerful, able to penetrate logs of 25-30 inches in diameter, and cost effective. The proposed X-ray CT log scanner will be purchased from MiCROTEC GmbH of Italy. The preliminary cost estimate is around $1.5 million. Once the log scanner is verified to meet the performance requirements envisioned, further negotiations will be conducted to fit within the funding available. The basic specifications for the log scanner are as follows: Bore opening: 90 cm Field of view: 75cm X-ray energy level: up to 385 kV Image resolution: 1024 x 1024 Scanning speed: at least 2 images per second Once acquired, the scanner will be installed in a mobile scanning unit. Further research will focus on integrating the scanner with software and hardware to make it viable for an industrial application in sawmills, veneer mills, concentration yards, etc.