Paper Technology International 2024 - Journal - Page 83
PAPERTECHNOLOGYINTERNATIONAL
Automation combined with advanced process control (APC)
is frequently deployed for more consistent operations, improved
production, energy savings and reduced costs. There are multiple
and interconnected variables that need to be considered in the pulp
and paper making processes, too many to measure and react to
manually. For example, if water is increased, the basis weight of the
paper product is also affected. Therefore, by dynamically adjusting
to multivariable process changes, ABB’s APC helps stabilize pulp
and/or paper machine operations and helps reduce variability,
enable energy savings and improve productivity.
Modern drives and motors are also installed by ABB for
reliable operations, energy ef昀椀ciency and process performance. To
maximize production, pulp and paper processes need to run reliably
every single day. ABB drives are designed to provide reliable control
over the speed and torque of motors so that they can run according
to the precise demands of the process. From pulp processing to
paper, board and tissue machines, using ABB medium and low
voltage drives and motors means more ef昀椀cient energy use, cutting
operating costs.
Staying on electri昀椀cation, ABB recently contributed to a
major decarbonization effort at Vafos Pulp in Norway, to power its
energy-intensive drying process with green electricity rather than
fuel oil. Replacing the plant’s nine-megawatt oil-昀椀red boiler with
electric heaters will remove 14,000 tons of CO2 from its emissions
every year. Critical to the new plant design, are ten ABB DCT880
power controllers which manage the power supplied to the elements
of the air heaters, ensuring ef昀椀cient and optimized operations,
and maintain a steady load that minimizes disruption to the local
electricity grid. To achieve the overall integration of systems, our
engineers worked closely with Norwegian energy system integrators,
EAS and Actemium Electro. Actemium preassembled and housed
the entire electrical system in two shipping containers, which
eliminated the cost of a new building, and paves the way for other
industrial operations to cost effectively electrify.
The biggest barrier to widespread electri昀椀cation is the
availability of green electricity because most countries are still
transitioning their power systems to renewables. One of the basic
aims of paper making is to transform 昀椀ber as it comes from the
wet-end with 99% water content, to the 昀椀nal product with about 5%
water content. Mechanical draining and the application of heat to
remove water require a substantial amount of energy, often from
non-renewable sources.
Making a difference for generations
Looking into the longer term, ABB is also part of a paper
industry research project in Germany known as Modellfabrik
Papier, Society for the Research Promotion of Sustainable Paper
Technologies. We’re contributing – with our knowledge of digital
solutions, the papermaking process, and data analytics – to the
design and development of an energy ef昀椀cient, circular paper
factory of the future. We have positioned ourselves in favour of
open standards, the ability to work with others and the seamless
integration of our equipment and technologies with third-party
systems, including in and around some of the world’s most modern
paper machines.
Together with some of our customers and competitors, we
are pursuing research into making paper with far less water, and
therefore far less energy than is required for traditional drying. One
challenge here is to achieve inter-昀椀ber bonding without the presence
of water, and to recycle paper in the absence of water. The pulp and
paper industry is already an industrial leader in terms of recycling;
that is, it has made real progress over the years, to attain recycling
of around 60% of its product. European producers lead the world
in taking this even further, with many producers pledging to raise
this number to 76% by 2030, near a current theoretical limit, given
that a proportion of paper will remain in circulation as books or
documents; while other coated or treated papers are not yet able to
be reprocessed.
Figure 4: Some of the world’s largest paper machines can be optimized using a wide variety of automation, electri昀椀cation and
industry-speci昀椀c technologies. Image ABB.
83
