Ahlstrom Engine Filtration
Taylorville, Illinois
Intern: Brett Leonard
Southern Illinois University, Carbondale
Ahlstrom Corporation is a Finnish company that manufactures high performance
fiber-based materials. The company has facilities in 20 countries
and employs over 5,700 people. The Taylorville Engine Filtration
facility produces high quality paper media for the automotive industry. The
pollution prevention intern identified opportunities to reduce energy consumption
and the amount of reject fiber sludge sent to a landfill for disposal.
Results:
Certain grades of paper manufactured at the facility are saturated with methanol. Excess
methanol, which is a volatile organic compound, must be captured and thermally
destructed in a thermal oxidizer (TO) unit before it is released to the atmosphere. The
unit is run on natural gas. The intern contacted three manufacturers
of regenerative TO units. The student determined that a properly-sized
regenerative system would have the potential to recover 50% of the methanol
for reuse. Once the unit was brought up to proper operating temperature,
it could run on the methanol and the natural gas valve could be shut off. Installing
a regenerative TO system has the potential to save over $1.2 million dollars
in fuel costs. The company plans to install a new unit in 2009.
Reject sludge from the papermaking process consists mainly of cellulose fiber
and water, with the solid content ranging between 25% – 30%. The
student recommended two options for reducing the amount of sludge disposed
of. These included:
- Dewatering the sludge with a screw press to reduce the volume of sludge
sent to the landfill, resulting in a $40,000 savings.
- Selling the dewatered sludge to a paperboard container facility which has
the potential to save over $100,000 per year.
|
