STEAMDRY will participate in the A.SPIRE Industrial Innovation Days 2026, taking place on 21–22 October 2026 at Albert Hall in Brussels, Belgium. The project will present its pilot-scale work on superheated-steam drying during a dedicated workshop on mature technologies for industrial heat decarbonisation.
Advancing fossil-free industrial drying
In the presentation “SteamDry: Piloting superheated-steam drying for energy-efficient and low-carbon paper and board production,” Sabrina Dusek of the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology will introduce STEAMDRY’s approach to developing and validating superheated-steam drying technology for web-like materials.
The project focuses on applications in the paper, board, tissue and nonwoven sectors, where drying is among the most energy-intensive production operations. STEAMDRY is advancing the technology from TRL 4 towards TRL 6 through pilot-scale demonstration under relevant industrial conditions.
The presentation will outline the project’s pilot-scale superheated-steam drying installation and planned experimental activities at VTT’s pilot facilities in Jyväskylä, Finland. It will also address process integration and optimisation, including the assessment of different dryer concepts and heat-recovery configurations using steady-state process simulations and simplified component models.
By combining fossil-free drying, renewable-electricity-based technologies and the recovery and reuse of latent heat, STEAMDRY aims to generate evidence on technical feasibility, operational performance, energy-saving potential and the pathway towards industrial scale-up. The project targets up to 60% energy savings in the drying process and approximately 40% savings at overall production-line level, compared with conventional reference solutions.
Workshop on industrial heat
STEAMDRY will contribute to Workshop 3: Mature technologies for industrial heat decarbonisation, a parallel project-results workshop scheduled for the second day of the event.
The session will bring together STEAMDRY with four other Processes4Planet projects:
| Project | Relevance to the session |
| ELECTRA | A project contributing solutions relevant to industrial heat decarbonisation. |
| H2GLASS | A project addressing low-carbon technology pathways for the glass sector. |
| HyInHeat | A project focused on hydrogen-related solutions for industrial heat applications. |
| METAWAVE | A project contributing innovative technologies for more sustainable and energy-efficient industrial processes. |
The workshop will provide a forum for sharing project achievements, lessons from technology development and the practical conditions needed to deploy mature decarbonisation solutions in energy-intensive industries. The wider programme aims to connect research and innovation results with future investment, industrial uptake and Europe’s competitiveness agenda.
Connecting results with scale-up
The A.SPIRE Industrial Innovation Days bring together industrial stakeholders, technology developers, researchers, policymakers and funding organisations to advance the Strategic Research, Innovation and Deployment Agenda for Europe’s process industries.
Through its participation, STEAMDRY will exchange experience with fellow projects working on industrial heat, electrification and energy efficiency, while helping demonstrate how innovative drying technologies can support the transition to a more competitive, resilient and climate-neutral European manufacturing sector.