Pulp and Papermill WWTP Startup, 2001 Environmental Conference Proceedings

Rick Hamilton, Dan Curry, Jerry Lancer, Mike Parker, Sam White--Willamette Industries, Inc. (Willamette), acquired the pulp and paper mill in Port Wentworth, Georgia, in June of 2000. The mill, which produced bleached market pulp and linerboard, had been idled by Smurfit-Stone Container Corporation (Smurfit-Stone) in October 1998. While the mill had been shut down, the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) had continued to treat the domestic wastewater from the city of Port Wentworth and industrial wastewater from a sugar refinery. In September 2000 the mill began production in a reconfigured mill, producing only bleached market pulp. This paper discusses the steps taken to ensure that the WWTP remained in compliance during the startup of the mill. RMT, Inc. (RMT), was retained by Willamette to develop a WWTP startup plan. The project included: researching past production and WWTP loadings and performance, understanding current loadings from the industrial and domestic sources, researching other pulp and paper treatment plant startups, auditing the existing facility for required repairs and upgrades, anticipating the future loadings of the reconfigured mill, developing a biomass ramp-up plan, operating a pilot reaction chamber in the lab, and developing appropriate operating ranges for key parameters and key troubleshooting actions to be followed through startup. Following the action plan resulted in a successful mill and WWTP startup.