For many years TSI has been steadily upgrading its clients’ dryer fleets with new drums and other improvements, like flat-back elbows. The requirement is usually to fit a new drum into the same space as the existing drum and to improve both quality and productivity.

TSI’s single-pass system with its internal drum flighting is often able to deliver a significant bump in production volume (usually around 10% or more) when replacing older drums (especially triple pass design). The flighting also has the advantage that it will allow the chips or strands to classify within the drum meaning that the range of moisture tolerance of the product coming out of the drum will often see a significant improvement. Upgrades such as flat back elbows reduce pressure drop, meaning the fan will gain some extra capacity. Modular construction of the drum enables it to be delivered in sections that bolt together on site for easier access in tight “brownfield” conditions and reduced downtime for installation.

TSI can further improve the situation by adding exhaust gas recycle to the system taking spent gas from the exhaust and adding it back to the dryer inlet as blend gas. This not only increases thermal efficiency it also increases humidity which produces a better conditioning of the strand, or chip. It can help resin consumption, and will result in less absolute emissions and lower volume of gasses going to the pollution control system. If the pollution control system is a bottleneck, this can breathe new capacity into existing equipment.

With more than 60 such retrofits in the OSB industry alone this is a proven way of increasing plant productivity and product quality without a complete rework of all the existing equipment.