Thermal Load Reduction and Discharge Enhancement at the MeadWestvaco Covington Mill, 2004 Paper Summit, Spring Technical & International Environmental Conference, (including Papermakers; Process Control, Electrical & Information; Product & Product Quality

MeadWestvaco Corporation, Packaging Resources Group, Covington Mill, had to eliminate the discharge of the powerhouse cooling tower to the Jackson River. Raw water was used as the cooling water source for turbinegenerator condensers in the powerhouse and evaporator surface condensers. The hot water from the condensers was pumped to the powerhouse cooling tower and discharged to the river. The discharge water from the cooling tower was warmer than the river water and resulted in an increase in the river water temperature To eliminate the powerhouse cooling tower discharge, the cooling tower process was closed with a minimum impact on the mill’s filtered water system. Operating data was collected and used to develop a computer simulation of the cooling tower that was verified versus the existing operation. Several design cases were then evaluated, and a process design configuration and parameters were selected from these computer simulations. The process design developed utilizes the powerhouse cooling tower in a closed cooling water circuit. The cooled water is collected in a sump and pumped to the evaporator condensers and the turbine-generator condensers. Hot water from each of the unit operations is returned to the cooling tower. Blowdown from this cooling water circuit is sent to the filtered water plant. Raw water is supplied for system makeup. The project was started up in November 2002.