Microfilter

Over the past few years in North America, the industry has seen a number of board mills moving to using flotation savealls as their main and polishing savealls to further close-up machine white water systems. One piece of technology that has recently come to our attention in our work with our clients in this area is the Algas Microfilter.

It can be used in a variety of roles including primary treatment, pre-thickening and as a polishing filter - 10 microns.

An interesting item with Algas is that they have a test filter that they bring on-site for pilot trials as well as a ROI survey.

TrumpJet

Wet End Technologies is a Finnish based company which is offering equipment for optimizing chemical mixing through their TrumpJet injection systems. These injection systems promote optimal mixing through multiple injection points at very high velocities (higher than those typically used).

Installed systems in mills in North America and Europe have proven to have rapid payback through reduced overall use of chemicals and more stable machine runnability.

AFT Screening SimAudit

Advanced Fiber Technologies based in Montreal, Canada, have developed a sophisticated software tool for evaluating current screening systems and evaluating potential modifications/rebuilds.

Useful when looking for increased capacity, efficiency or energy or fibre savings.

Omni Continental has not used this in our work yet but it does look interesting.

Dynamic Process Simulators

ProNamics Control is a Canadian based process control consulting company specializing in the paper industry.

As part of their process control audits and their training and education courses they have developed a series of Dynamic simulators for various parts of the process including; HD Storage consistency, thick stock, consistency, lean stock and dryer section.

The system operates on Vis Sim and the simulators are fully configurable allowing the user to build a replica of their own systems.

It is extremely useful for training new operators and I&E staff, troubleshooting current issues and evaluating process or equipment changes in the mill - for instance energy savings and control improvement through application of a VFD in a specific application.

Cost is $1000 US to $2000 US depending on the simulator.