The main objective of this research was to develop microwave drying technology for
wood strand drying for oriented strand board (OSB) manufacturing. OSB currently holds
about 57% of sheathing market in US housing industry and its use is on the increase. There
could be two advantages for wood strand to be dried with microwave. At first of all, the dry
time of wood strand is to be reduced. In microwave processing energy is supplied by an
electromagnetic field directly to the material. This results in rapid heating throughout the
material thickness with reduced thermal gradients and volumetric heating can also reduce
processing times and save energy. Secondly, the VOC release of wood strand is decreased
during its drying with microwave because this kind of drying method applied a littler energy
and lower temperature compared to rotary drum dryer in wood composites mills. However,
besides the two advantages as above it must be also noticed that the change of drying quality
for strands with microwave method. It is value to research the influence of microwave drying
method on the quality of strand specially its surface wettability which has a big influence on
the bonding strength of wood strand composites.