Every year on 5 March, World Energy Efficiency Day reminds us that the cleanest and cheapest energy is the energy we do not need to use. For SteamDry, this is a perfect moment to focus on one of industry’s “blind spots” for energy consumption: the drying of continuous web‑like materials such as paper, nonwovens and wood‑based products.
What is celebrated on 5 March?
World Energy Efficiency Day has been marked since 1998, following an international meeting on rational energy use held in Austria, where 5 March was proposed as a global awareness date. Since then, it has been used to promote policies, technologies and behaviour changes that allow us to do the same (or more) with less energy, cutting costs and emissions without sacrificing quality of life or industrial competitiveness.
A global challenge: producing more with less energy
Worldwide, electricity demand continues to rise as we electrify transport, industry and digital services. Energy efficiency is the “first fuel” that helps curb this growth: in decarbonisation scenarios, efficiency improvements deliver a major share of the reduction in energy use and emissions, especially in energy‑intensive sectors like pulp and paper, chemicals and steel.
In Europe, the manufacturing of paper and paper products consumes hundreds of petajoules per year and relies heavily on heat for processes such as drying. That makes efficiency in drying a key lever for meeting climate targets while keeping the European industry competitive.
Drying: the big hidden consumer
Drying processes for web‑like materials are responsible for a very large share of thermal energy use in several industries. The SteamDry vision roadmap estimates annual drying energy demand in Europe at approximately:
- ~400 PJ per year in paper and board.
- 1.4–2.2 PJ in wetlaid nonwovens.
- 70–140 PJ in wood materials (panels, veneer, etc.).
In many paper and board mills, drying alone accounts for more than 60% of total process heat demand. Conventional technologies – steam‑heated cylinder dryers, hot‑air impingement, through‑air (TAD) and infrared – typically use around 1,070–1,800 kWh of heat per tonne of paper in the drying section, often supplied by fossil‑fired boilers or direct gas‑fired air heaters.
What SteamDry brings to energy efficiency
SteamDry (“Superheated steam drying for sustainable and recyclable web‑like materials”) is a Horizon Europe project (GA 101137906) designed to rethink how paper, nonwovens and certain wood products are dried. Its objectives include:
- Developing a high‑efficiency drying technology.
- Achieving a CO₂‑emission‑free drying process.
- Piloting superheated steam drying (SSD) for representative products.
- Implementing advanced (AI‑supported) control systems and digitalisation.
- Assessing environmental, techno‑economic and business impacts.
The core is superheated steam drying (SSD), which replaces hot air in the dryer hood with circulating superheated steam in a closed loop. Steam is heated above its boiling point, passes through the dryer and mixes with the vapour coming from the product; part of this steam is then condensed to recover useful high‑temperature heat for other process steps, while the rest is reheated and reused. This allows SteamDry to:
- Improve heat transfer and reduce net energy consumption.
- Minimise stack losses and recover high‑grade heat.
- Eliminate direct combustion emissions in drying when energy input is electric and low‑carbon.
How much can be saved?
Modelling work in SteamDry shows that for conductive cylinder dryers, combining SSD with advanced heat recovery, high‑temperature heat pumps and steam compression can reduce thermal energy demand by more than 50% compared with a reference case without heat integration. For impingement and TAD dryers, superheated steam enables optimisation of steam temperature, mass flow and heat recovery to balance efficiency, dryer compactness and integration with the plant’s overall energy system.
Given that drying in paper and board alone accounts for around 400 PJ per year in Europe, out of roughly 650 PJ used in total for paper and paper products, the system‑level savings potential is very large. Additional savings are possible in nonwovens and wood‑based panels, where drying can represent up to 70% of process energy and specific heat demands between 0.8 and 2.7 MWh per tonne of product.
A roadmap for the coming decade
The SteamDry roadmap describes a path from 2024 onwards, moving through laboratory, pilot, demo and flagship phases. During the project, partners develop critical elements such as leakage‑free sealing, steam purification, mechanical vapour compression, heat‑integration concepts and advanced control systems, both for rebuilds and new machines. Beyond the current project, the vision foresees larger demonstration lines and the first commercial‑scale retrofits towards the end of this decade.