Optimization of energy efficiency and condensate production in evaporation plants for a modern softwood pulp mill, TAPPI Journal April 2026

 


Application: This study provides a benchmark example of how a high level of process department integration can be achieved to obtain a very high level of energy efficiency and environmental performance in an actual kraft pulp mill environment, while addressing corresponding technical challenges. It also illustrates that optimizing energy efficiency and condensate production in the evaporation plant requires focusing on lowering the overall mill steam consumption and not just on improving the steam economy of the evaporation plant itself.

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Author: Mathias Gourdon, Outi Niittymäki, Fredrik Vedin, and Anders Wernqvist
Optimization of energy efficiency and condensate production
ABSTRACT: To meet the need to further improve thermal efficiency and environmental performance of kraft pulp mills, new systems and techniques have been developed within the evaporation plant. This paper describes these novel approaches and how they were implemented in a project completed in 2018 for a new evaporator and condensate treatment system supplied by Valmet at the SCA Östrand market pulp mill in Sweden. This project was part of a stepwise upgrade of the complete mill to increase the production capacity of the mill from 430,000 to 900,000 air-dried metric tons/year (ADt/y). As part of this upgrade, the mill had the objectives to increase the energy efficiency of the pulp mill and to minimize the air emissions as much as possible, the effluent volume, and the water usage in the mill. The mill also wanted to have the disposal of the biosludge in the black liquor, and the production of tall oil from black liquor soap, liquid methanol, and turpentine. This required that the new evaporation and condensate treatment system be very closely integrated into the other process departments of the mill, including integration of the hot weak black liquor flash vapor from the digester directly into the evaporator train and the production of multiple streams of clean evaporation plant condensate at the correct temperature for the bleach plant. Heat and mass balance calculation values, which were found to do very well in predicting the effect on actual mill operation, are also presented in this paper.
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