Production and Quality Improvements at Georgia-Pacific's (Kalamazoo, MI) ONP/OMG Recycling Mill, 1998 Recycling Symposium Proceedings

In April 1996, the final phase of a completely rebuilt deink plant was completed to process 5050 0NP:OMG into coated and uncoated fine paper at the rate of 200 tpd. Productivity and quality obstacles limited papermachine usage to 115 tpd as mill personnel worked through the learning curve. These obstacles negatively impacted the return on investment for the project. To address the problem without making major capital investments a task force was formed to improve productivity and quality. With help from mill suppliers, a series of trials were developed using design of experiments and statistics. This plan allowed mill personnel to make several chemical and process equipment changes under controlled conditions. Major changes included pulping time, deinking agent type, coarse screen rotor speed and consistency to the disk filter. In less than 9 months, the collaborative efforts of the team produced significant improvements. The results achieved include a 50% increase in production, a 2% IS0 increase in brightness, 7% increase in yield, increased post-consumer content and reduced daily brightness fluctuation.