Brunner Hildebrand, which specializes in kilns for drying softwood and hardwood lumber, has been an industry leader since 1948. Located in Nashville, Tennessee, Brunner Hildebrand Lumber Dry Kiln Co. offers sales and service for all types of kilns.
The company’s dry kiln solutions are based on decades of experience in the demanding lumber drying conditions of the North American sawmill industry. Its expertise ensures that customers receive individual dry kiln solutions tailored to their needs. The possibility of future expansion is always taken into account when designing the kiln layout.
Brunner Hildebrand’s priority is to provide the best engineered, installed, and serviced product in the market. Its service network is on standby to provide full service support after delivery and installation, either on location or by remote access.
Batch Kilns
Track-loaded and forklift-loaded batch kilns are designed for all kinds of lumber packages with regard to dimensions, lumber species, and required moisture content. State-of-the-art automation ensures a fully controlled drying process and the required end result. Track-loaded kilns offer shorter loading/unloading time, which improves the kiln’s utilization rate. An optional shelter on both sides of the kiln may be used for temporary storage space.
Continuous Kilns
Brunner Hildebrand recently introduced its new highly efficient continuous-type kiln, the Hildebrand Continuous Kiln (HCK-A). This type of continuous kiln is designed for mills that produce large volumes of lumber, such as dimension SPF.
While designing the HCK-A, the company put great emphasis on creating exactly the right drying conditions (temperature, climate, air speed) for the respective lumber moisture content. The technical features of each individual drying zone are customized to the drying state and moisture of the lumber passing through.
Lumber packages are placed lengthwise on carts and dried during transport through a number of zones with separate climate conditions. These conditions are perfectly adjusted to the lumber moisture content at all times. Indexing of the kiln carts is performed by powerful hydraulic pusher units.
Heat-Treatment Kilns
More and more countries demand that the wooden packaging of imported goods comply with ISPM 15. Brunner Hildebrand has developed an entire line of kilns specially for heat treatment of pallets and wooden packaging – for loads from 100 up to more than 2,500 pallets. Short temperature ramp-up time and strong airflow make for fast kiln throughput. The dry kiln software is equipped with elaborate features for process documentation.
Control System B-Vector EW
With the Brunner Hildebrand dry kiln automation and control system, kilns are easy to operate. Creating default settings and using the control system is similar to the Windows operating system, and windows can be chosen from a drop-down menu.
B-Vector EW also features the brand-new Brunner Hildebrand Weight Precision Technology (HWPT), a lumber moisture measurement system capable of weighing whole lumber stacks wirelessly.
One of the flaws of common in-kiln-probe systems and electrical resistance metering is that they only consider between 6 and 12 probes for the entire lumber load in the kiln. The HWPT system, however, takes into account the weight of the entire stack of lumber that rests on top of the weighing devices. Therefore, the number of ‘probes’ is increased to hundreds or even thousands of boards in those lumber packages. The benefits are unparalleled precision of the resulting average moisture content along with perfect ease of use since no probes have to be placed. The weighing devices are simply placed on the kiln floor as replacement of the regular 4×4 lumber spacers.
For more information about Brunner Hildebrand dry kilns, contact Jos aan de Stegge at (615) 469-0745, email jos.aandestegge@brunner-hildebrand.com, or visit https://www.brunner-hildebrand.de/en/
