Abstract

Introduction

As economic circumstances change and environmental legislation tightens, paper mills are forced to minimise their energy and water consumption and produce minimum emissions. Without the introduction of new technologies and chemicals, increased re use of the process water will lead to a whole range of production and process problems and a reduction of product quality. To enable a further closure of the water loop, all `accumulates' should be controlled and/or prevented. In that aspect, pulp and paper mills need to introduce new low cost technologies and chemicals to achieve a cleaner process in combination with reduced production costs, which results in a better energy efficiency, reduction of water demand and reduction of emissions. Objectives of this project are:

• Industrial: Reduction of water (50%), energy (35°/) and chemical consumption (35%) combined with an improvement of the paper machine runnability and an upgrading of the product quality bv applying clean technologies.
• Economical: Reduction of production costs of paper by 10 Euro/ton (300 1.150 kEuro/vear for average participating mills) Increase of the competitiveness of the European paper mills. Increase market share for the technology suppliers in the paper and process industries like textile and food
• Social: Implementation of environmental clean technologies to reduce environmental pollution and human risks. A more sustainable paper production in terms of reduced energy and water consumption. Exploitation of the results to give similar savings at other paper mills and other process industries. Education of the technical employees in the paper mills.

Activities

The research approach will be applied scientific research, which means that successful results will be implemented into the paper mills. The objectives will be realised by a competitive concept towards ZLE (Zero Liquid Effluent. or in other words total closure of the mill water system). The project focuses to an optimum between production economics and environmental aims. The product related concept is based on four complementary treatment technologies:

• PreTreatment,
• Membrane BioReactor,
• ElectroDialysis and
• Electro Chemical Activation.

Water Pinch technology will be used to obtain the most economical water system configuration. The objective is to determine whether and under which conditions the concept is technical and economical feasible. The innovative character is the combination of several stand alone complementary technologies. The water treatment concept of this project is focussed on in mill (in process) treatment. Hereby the pollution is removed at the source. This presented concept is a large step forward beyond the present state of the art, whereby it will be possible to reach the goal for each product group. The final achievement will be an economic and technical optimal water system for different product groups by implementation of clean technologies to give an overall reduction of production costs of 10 Euro/ton, increase of product capacity of 10% (runnability), reduction of environmental load, chemical additive reduction and hence increasing the competitiveness of the European paper industry.

The pre competitive character for the SME companies is that the system has been proved at the end of this project to reach the aim and technical risks are avoided.

Time to market of this Product Related Treatment Concept is expected to be 2 year from the start of the project. An exploitation management group will be responsible for the exploitation and dissemination of the project results. Routes for exploitation all over Europe include publications, presentations at conferences and education at seminars and paper institutes.

Contacts

Coordinator

• Markus BLOMQUIST / Papierfabrik Niederauer Mühle Gmbh GERMANY

Participant

• Michel VAN SCHAIK / Aquastel Advanced Technical Unit Ltd UNITED KINGDOM
• Andrea BORTOLI / Cartiere Modesto Cardella SPA ITALY
• Johannes THOLEN / Electrolyse Project BV NETHERLANDS
• Birger P HEUSER / Heuser Apparatebau Gmbh GERMANY
• Rofitec Holding NETHERLANDS
• Erwin VERSTRAETEN / TNO IT&T Initiatief NETHERLANDS
• Lex VAN DIJK / Triqua B.V NETHERLANDS
• Michael L SINOTT / University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology / UNITED KINGDOM
• Ron SPORTEL / WA Sanders Papierfabriek Coldenhove BV NETHERLANDS