Russia-headed forest industry major Segezha Group, part of the joint-stock financial corporation Sistema JSFC, has announced that as part of the third phase of investment on upgrading the Segezha Pulp and Paper Mill (PPM) in Segezha City, the Republic of Karelia, a new modern 90 MW combined heat and power (CHP) boiler plant using wood residues and sludge has been put into operation.
Now operating startup and commissioning phase, the new multifuel boiler combined heat and power (CHP) plant, MTK-11, will supply process steam and power for the pulp and paper mill reducing its dependence on fuel oil. Supplied by Finland-headed forest industry and energy technology provider Valmet Oyj, the 37 meters high boiler plant consists of several industrial installations:
- a 90 MW Valmet multifuel bubbling fluidised bed (BFB) boiler with a capacity to supply 120 tonnes of steam per hour,
- a Saalasti wood chipping line that can provide up to 100 tonnes of chipped wood per hour,
- a 3 500 m3 fuel storage from Vecoplan to be brought into operation in May 2019.
Wood waste and paper sludge
Representing around RUB 3.5 billion (≈ EUR 48.8 million) in investment, the new boiler plant will enable the Segezha mill to receive additional electrical power for production needs, and also solve a major concern of every industrial operator – proper waste disposal and reduction of the environmental impact of its operations.
The equipment to convert turn wood residues and dewatered sludge into boiler fuel satisfy the requirements of the best available technologies (BAT). The boiler is equipped with modern electrostatic precipitators (ESP) that ensure proper removal of dust from the flue gas.
The combustion of sludge and wood waste residuals such as bark and woodchips will lead to the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as it will reduce fuel oil consumption at Segezha PPM by 30 percent.
Monitoring of the environmental impact of the new boiler is performed by a special laboratory and operations services of the mill. There is constant monitoring of air quality, noise level, soil continuum, the quantity of potable water and wastewater composition in wastewater treatment plants (WWTP).
The engineering design of the project provides for the reuse of water heated in the equipment cooling system for water treatment to prepare purified water for production needs of the enterprise in order to protect the Mozog-Guba Bay of Lake Vygozero. Handling wood ash residue is particularly monitored: fly ash from the ESP hopper is delivered to a specially equipped solid domestic waste facility.
The new biomass-fired boiler plant will not only reduce our energy costs, but will also propel production to the next ecological level. Due to the MTK we increase produce-ability and reduce production costs to make the company more competitive in the global market. Segezha Group decreases the environmental stress for all assets in its regions of operation, said Mikhail Shamolin, CEO and President of Segezha Group.
Reduction of heat and power costs
Another phase of modernization of the Segezha PPM using energy efficiency technologies resulted in the achievement of one more goal – production costs for electricity and heat used to produce packing paper were reduced.
Last year we reached the record volume – 355 000 tonnes of high-end bag paper, while in 2014-2015 production hadn’t exceeded even 260 000 tonnes. Nowadays our production costs are about 30 percent higher than at the average in the industry nominally, specifically because we don’t generate enough electricity and heat to turn to self-dependence. We need to ramp up, at least up to 600-700 thousand tonnes of paper. Only this rate will allow us finding the power balance and providing a competitive cost of production, remarked Mikhail Shamolin, President of Segezha Group.
The upgrading project for the mill is included in the Federal Programme targeted at Karelia’s development until 2020. The quantity of financial investments in the integrated development of the township-forming enterprise is already more than RUB 14 billion (≈ EUR 195.3 million).
In the framework of already implemented phases of the programme, the digester was modernized in order to increase production volume of pulp, and a Voith papermaking machine with a capacity of 110 000 tonnes of paper per annum was also brought into operation.
Building up-to-date generating capacity that uses benefits of cyclic added-value wood processing becomes a precondition of investment programs. Our company introduces the best practices in the field of bioenergy into all production modernization projects that are currently implemented or planned to be implemented, as well as during the construction of new plants, Shamolin said.
