Vandersanden has completed a major technical upgrade at its Beek plant in the Netherlands. The project involved an investment of approximately €35 million and covered pressing, drying, setting and flue-gas treatment. Its centrepiece is described as the first industrial-scale saturated-steam drying system used by a brick factory in Europe.
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According to publicly available information, the upgrade has made green-brick drying approximately 30% faster, reduced total CO₂ emissions from the plant by 25%, and increased annual production capacity from 25 million to 35 million bricks.
This is more than an equipment replacement. It reflects a broader shift in the decarbonisation of high-temperature manufacturing: the real challenge is not simply to change the fuel, but to redesign how heat moves through the entire plant.
1. Why Is Green-Brick Drying So Important to Plant Decarbonisation?
Freshly formed green bricks must be dried before they enter the kiln.
Conventional brick plants generally burn natural gas to produce hot air, which removes moisture from the green bricks by convective heat transfer. The principle is straightforward, but the process has several persistent efficiency and quality constraints.
First, a substantial volume of recirculating air must be heated continuously, while exhaust air carries away sensible heat and energy associated with water vapour. Second, if the brick surface dries faster than moisture can move out from the interior, a steep moisture gradient can develop. The result is often a dry outer layer surrounding a wetter core. The surface begins to shrink while the interior remains moist, increasing the risk of cracking, warping and deformation. |  |
The drying curve cannot simply be accelerated without limit. Faster drying usually increases internal moisture and shrinkage gradients, which can raise the reject rate. Green-brick drying is therefore a balancing act between energy efficiency, production speed and product quality.
2. What Really Changes When Hot Air Is Replaced by Steam?
The central feature of the Beek upgrade is the use of a saturated-steam atmosphere in place of conventional natural-gas-fired hot-air drying.
Public information indicates that conventional chambers use hot air and natural gas, whereas the new system uses saturated steam as the main drying medium. The steam is generated partly from recovered kiln heat, with support from electric heat pumps.
The significance of the technology goes beyond replacing air with water vapour. It changes both the way heat enters the green brick and the way moisture migrates from the interior to the surface.
2.1 Condensation Heat Raises the Green-Brick Temperature More Quickly
At the beginning of the process, part of the steam can condense on the cooler surface of the wet green brick, releasing latent heat.
Compared with heating by hot-air convection alone, this mechanism can transfer energy into the body rapidly and shorten the time required for the green brick to reach an effective drying temperature.
The initially humid environment also helps prevent excessively rapid surface evaporation. Instead of stripping water from the surface immediately, the process first heats the body and then moves into a controlled moisture-removal stage. This can reduce the risk of surface hardening, cracking and deformation.
2.2 Higher Temperature and Vapour Pressure Promote Outward Moisture Migration
As the temperature inside the green brick rises, the vapour pressure of the moisture in its pores also increases. Vapour-pressure differences, capillary forces and concentration gradients then work together to move moisture from the interior towards the surface. By controlling temperature, steam partial pressure, chamber pressure and circulation conditions, the system can accelerate drying while |  |
limiting excessive differences in moisture content between the surface and the core. At Beek, the result is reported to be an approximately 30% reduction in drying time.
Vandersanden has not disclosed the system’s detailed pressure, steam temperature, circulation ratio, moisture-exhaust strategy or stage-by-stage drying curves. The explanation above therefore interprets the process using general steam-drying thermodynamics; it should not be read as a complete description of the Beek line’s proprietary design.
3. The Real Breakthrough Is Not Steam Alone, but Waste Heat Plus Heat Pumps
If the steam were still produced by a conventional gas-fired boiler, much of its decarbonisation value would be lost.
The more significant feature of the Beek project is the creation of a thermal network combining recovered kiln heat with electric heat pumps:
Kiln heat recovery → electric heat pump raises the temperature level → process steam generation → green-brick drying
After firing in a tunnel kiln, bricks must pass through a cooling stage. At the same time, the kiln’s cooling zone and exhaust gases release substantial quantities of residual heat. Even where this heat was previously recovered, its usefulness was often limited by its temperature level and the available applications. Heat at an insufficient temperature cannot directly and reliably satisfy an industrial steam requirement.
The electric heat pump acts as an energy upgrader. Using electrical work, it raises recovered low-grade heat to the temperature required by the process, after which the upgraded heat supports steam generation. Energy that might otherwise have been discharged to the environment is brought back into production.
If the electricity used by the heat pump is increasingly sourced from renewable generation, the indirect emissions associated with the drying stage can potentially fall further.
The essence of the upgrade is therefore not the addition of a new dryer in isolation. It is the integration of the kiln, heat recovery, heat pumps and drying process into a coordinated thermal network.
4. How Can Emissions Fall by 25% While Capacity Rises by 40%?
According to public information, the Beek plant’s annual capacity increased from 25 million to 35 million bricks, a rise of 40%, while total plant CO₂ emissions fell by 25%. The figures may appear contradictory, but they illustrate an important principle of industrial energy-efficiency projects: lower energy use per unit of output does not necessarily require lower production capacity. First, drying approximately 30% faster allows a given drying installation to handle more green bricks over the same period. Second, more uniform drying can reduce cracking and deformation, improving first-pass yield. The plant also upgraded its press, automated setting equipment and flue-gas cleaning system to match the new drying rate and maintain balance across forming, drying, firing and downstream handling. |  |
Public reporting states that the approximately 12,000 m² plant employs around 40 people and received an energy investment allowance of €850,000.
One distinction is especially important: the reported 25% reduction refers to total CO₂ emissions from the entire plant, not the energy-saving rate of the dryer alone.
5. Why Does Steam Drying Depend on Digital Control?
Introducing steam does not make the drying process automatically stable.
Different clay bodies, brick thicknesses, initial moisture levels and pore structures tolerate different heating and moisture-removal rates. Excessive steam input, inadequate moisture removal or overly rapid internal pressure development can still cause quality problems.
The competitive advantage of such a system therefore lies not only in thermodynamic design but also in control capability. The production system must continuously coordinate initial green-brick temperature and moisture, chamber temperature, steam pressure and flow, fluctuations in recovered kiln heat, heat-pump load, final moisture content and product-quality data. Kiln waste heat is not a perfectly constant source. Changes in production rate, product format and kiln operating conditions also change the amount of recoverable heat. A central control system must therefore coordinate heat recovery, heat-pump output and dryer demand. Without this coordination, even advanced individual machines may fail to deliver stable system-level efficiency. |  |
6. What Can Other Energy-Intensive Industries Learn from This Project?
The most important lesson from Vandersanden is that industrial decarbonisation should not focus only on replacing natural gas with electricity.
For heat-intensive sectors such as bricks, ceramics, glass, food and paper, a more practical route often consists of four layers.
First, reduce avoidable heat loss. Before changing the energy source, identify recoverable heat in flue gases, cooling streams and process exhausts. A plant should not purchase energy while simultaneously discharging useful heat. Second, move residual heat across process boundaries. Heat leaving a firing process does not necessarily have to return to the kiln; it can become a source for drying, preheating or other lower-temperature operations. Third, use heat pumps to upgrade low-grade heat. Much industrial waste heat is not worthless—it is simply available at too low a temperature. High-temperature industrial heat pumps can bridge the gap between the available heat and the process requirement. |  |
Fourth, use digital control to coordinate the system. Energy savings move beyond individual machines only when equipment, energy and quality data are managed within one control logic.
This is what makes the Beek project particularly instructive. Instead of treating decarbonisation, capacity growth and quality control as three separate goals, it uses process integration to make them mutually reinforcing.
Conclusion
Vandersanden aims to achieve climate neutrality by 2050. The Beek upgrade is part of the company’s “Together to Zero” sustainability programme.
On the surface, this is a €35 million brick-plant modernisation. From an industrial-technology perspective, however, it validates a much broader direction: the next step in the efficiency of energy-intensive manufacturing is not merely to change fuels, but to redesign where heat comes from, how it moves and where it can be reused.
When kiln heat recovery, industrial heat pumps, steam drying and digital control are brought into a single energy system, decarbonisation is no longer only a cost. It can also support faster production, more stable quality and higher capacity.
That may be one of the most practical paths available to traditional manufacturing on the road to climate neutrality.
