Wood-based panel technology, glulam connectors, wood fibre boards and laminated wood turbine blades were among the award winners at this year’s prestigious Schweighofer Prize 2011.
Dieter Siempelkamp was named the main prize-winner at the awards ceremony in Vienna on June 16. Mr Siempelkamp, who received €100,000, won the prize for the revolutionary ContiRoll continuous press for wood-based panel manufacturing.
Four innovation prizes worth €50,000 each were also awarded: Agepan THD Static wood fibre board manufactured by Sonae subsidiary Glunz AG; the TES Energy Façade, a timber-based system for building renovation; Hess Limitless, a connection system developed by Hess Timber for on-site assembly of long-span glulam beams; and glulam turbine blades for floating tidal power plants made by Moelven.
Sonae CEO Carlos Bianchi de Aguiar described the company’s innovation award as a great honour and likened it to the “Nobel Prize of the forest and wood industries”.
Another award winner, the laminated turbine blades, relates to a floating tidal power station installed last October off the coast of Norway.
It is the first time timber has been used for such an application, with the four underwater turbines each having two laminated timber blades measuring 2m wide, 3m high and 10m long.
Age Holmstad, of Moelven Limtre AS, said an advantage of using laminated Scandinavian pine under water was that saturated wood sunk into water had the same weight as the water around it.
“Laminated timber is also an eco-friendly material and is flexible in terms of changes and relocation. There is no danger of rot or worm attack either, because the turbines are completely submerged without access to oxygen and are in constant motion.”
