BIOHOT-Bionisch Optimierte HolzTrocknung

The jewel beetles Melanophila acuminata and Merimna atrata show a peculiar behavior. When all other animals try to escape from a woodland fire, these beetles fly towards the place to lay their eggs on the freshly burnt areas. Thereby the beetles can both orientate towards any woodland fire with their odor- and infrared perception and differentiate between burnt and heated wood to find an appropriate place for the larval development. Their ability in odor perception has been optimized by millions of years of phylogenesis and therefore marker compounds have been selected that are highly specific for the different stages of thermal wood combustion. In this project these marker compounds are used to develop an early warning fire detection system to increase the drying processes safety in a wood flake dryer of the particle board producer Glunz AG, Werk Nettgau. By detecting a fire before it ignites the drying process can specifically adapt to the situation. The basis of this sensor concept is a semiconductor gassensorarray, that is optimized according to the databasis of GC-MS/EAD results by means of GC-MS/SOMMSA technique to fulfill the complex requirements of the wood flake dryers' conditions. This biomimetik concept is developed in cooperation with the Institute of Applied Physics of the Justus-Liebig-University in Gießen, the UST-Umweltsensortechnik GmbH, the Fagus Greten GreCon GmbH & Co KG and the Arbeitsgruppe Holzwerkstoffe of the University of Hamburg. In the frame of this project a resulting prototype should optimize the process control of a wood flake dryer in order to save thermal energy in the drying process.