Increasing Flexibility for Time of Day Pulping at Alberta Newsprint Company, 2007 International Mechanical Pulping Conference

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In 2005, Alberta Newsprint Company undertook a capital project, known as the “TMP Production Project”, to increase the thermo-mechanical pulping (TMP) plant production rate in order to better manage electrical power costs and to improve the heat recovery from high consistency refining.

The TMP plant in its previous configuration had more than adequate capacity to meet the day-to-day production requirements of the paper machine. However, ANC operates in a fully deregulated electrical power market and rigorously practices “Time of Day” (TOD) pulping to minimize electrical power costs. Specifically, this requires operating the TMP plant at high production rate during times when power costs are low and progressively reducing production as power prices rise and exceed predetermined threshold limits. In recent years, pulp demand had increased substantially due to increasing paper machine speed. The higher pulp demand increased refiner uptime resulting in a significant reduction in the flexibility and subsequent cost effectiveness of TOD pulping.