Energy-effective production of mechanical pulp by targeted treatment of extractives and selective fibre wall weakening

The basic idea of this project is to develop and support mill scale implementation of technology for achieving minimum 10% reduction in energy consumption for production of mechanical pulp while maintaining pulp quality and avoiding negative environmental impacts. A 10% reduction in energy consumption will amount to 0.5 TWh, only counting the Norwegian mills. The project will focus on the following main challenges: - Optimize composition, addition points and conditions for adding chemicals/enzymes - New and cost-effective ways of handling extractives in process water - Ensuring maintained or improved paper quality - Support of mill implementation, addition of chemicals/enzymes Mechanical pulping is accomplished in two distinct processes: separating or breaking down the wood into its basic constituents and transforming the individual fibers into suitable pulps for papermaking. These processes are defined as defibration and fibrillation, respectively. Most of the energy is consumed in the latter fibrillation stage. Increasing electrical price and shortage of electricity will increase the demand for finding new ways of reducing the energy consumption during refining. Today's methods of reducing the energy consumption often demand high inves tment costs which are difficult to justify. The proposed project aims at applying chemicals/enzymes in existing equipment in order to reduce the energy consumption and to remove extractives from the pulp. This project will be a co-operation between No rske Skogindustrier ASA, Andritz AG, PFI, NTNU, KK-foundation and Mid Sweden University. Two PhD students will be a part of the project group.