Sappi has commissioned ABB’s fibre measurement technologies to enhance energy efficiency and increase productivity and profitability at its Maastricht mill in the Netherlands.
ABB’s L&W Fibre & Freeness Online is an industrial hardware solution that provides accurate and continuous fibre morphology measurement and freeness at the wet end of the paper production process. It has been deployed at the Dutch mill to stabilise pulp quality at the stock preparation, controlling and refining stage. This results in better runnability on paper, board or tissue machines, helping make more on-specification product at lower cost.
Machine operators at the mill have greater visibility into the batch process for producing microfibrillated cellulose (MFC), more accurately controlling the properties end-customers have requested. Such monitoring has consistently proven to be reliable in better predicting how the materials behave when online in the machine. This ensures high quality, on specification of the pulp mix/fibres through the wet end of the paper machine.
The mill, which has reinvented itself numerous times over the years, recently switched to the production of luxury packaging cardboard after anticipating the shrinking market for graphic paper. It now includes high-end retailers, magazine publishers and packaging converters in its customer base.
“Papermakers strive for consistency at every stage of their process, predictable outcomes to meet customer specifications,” said Wilson Monteiro, Global Business Line Manager for Pulp, Paper & Fiber, ABB’s Process Industries division. “Sappi is making papers for the luxury market at Maastricht and wants to achieve the right quality, neither under nor over processed. ABB’s L&W Fiber Freeness Online is a tool to optimize this at the early stock preparation stage. We look forward to working with Sappi to understand the results of its use and support further developments.”
