Paper Industry Can Cut Energy Consumption by 10%

Americans use 36.5 billion rolls of toilet paper every year, representing the pulping of some 15 million trees, 473,587,500,000 gallons of water and 253,000 tons of chlorine and about 17.3 terawatts of electricity annually. So per roll that's 37 gallons of water, 1.3 KWh of electricity and some 1.5 pounds of wood. (Credit: Flickr @ Derek Gavey http://www.flickr.com/photos/derekgavey/)

Currently, the paper industry accounts for 2.2% of the nation’s energy use. This figure can be lowered by one-tenth by deploying a new heat pump concept, developed by the Energy research center of the Netherlands (ECN), which makes the process of paper manufacturing more sustainable and more affordable.

ECN, the largest energy research institute in the Netherlands, and Bronswerk Heat Transfer, worldwide supplier of heat transfer solutions, signed a license agreement on Friday July 5th for selling the concept on the market. The innovative concept upgrades industrial waste heat to higher temperatures so it can be reused in the process.

The temperature of most industrial waste heat is too low to be reused. Therefore, heat pumps upgrade the temperature to higher levels. The application developed by ECN offers an economically viable method to upgrade the temperature of waste heat to such levels that it can be reused in the industrial process, resulting in a significant energy saving.

“Thanks to ECN’s concept, reusing waste heat has come within reach for multiple industrial applications. With this technique the paper industry can make a giant leap towards a more sustainable and efficient production process,” Robert Kleiburg, COO of ECN says.

According to Sjaak Remmerswaal, President of Bronswerk Heat Transfer, a more sustainable industry must be economically viable. “If we can earn back our sustainable technologies by energy savings and lower costs, we increase the incentive to make the switch. We are very optimistic about the market prospects of this system,” Remmerswaal says.

The concept is considered innovative because of the much higher temperatures that can be achieved. By using a natural refrigerant the heat pump within this system can upgrade the temperature of the waste heat from 60 up to 140 degrees Celsius (140 up to 284 °F) to produce steam, which is much higher compared to common heat pump systems.

ECN and Bronswerk, together with packaging specialist SmurfitKappa and air conditioning and refrigeration technology specialist IBK, are testing the concept on a small scale (200 kW) at SmurfitKappa Roermond Paper. “This innovation fits perfectly with our ambition to halve the energy consumption in the whole chain”, Henk Hoevers, Vice-president Technology at SmurfitKappa emphasises.