Complete design case study for pulp and paper industry

Abstract

Pulp and paper industry is a traditional biorefinery system that produces low margin paper products at low innovation development. It needs business transformation to enhance profitability along with efficient material and energy consumption through process development of high-value bioproducts. In response to climate change concerns and declining petroleum resources, the concept of biorefinery has developed using biochemical and thermochemical technologies. To develop biorefinery together with the conventional pulp and paper industry, integrated biorefinery in the existing pulp mill has been designed as a long-term sustainable solution. A systematic framework is needed to synthesize and design promising integrated systems from numerous alternatives. A three-level methodology, involving Level-1 Base Case Design, Level-2 Optimization and Analysis, and Level-3 Innovation, is proposed as an effective approach to determine optimal technologies suitable for the transformation of the traditional system through superstructure optimization, process analysis, and process improvement in terms of economic and environmental issues. To achieve a sustainable development of the integrated biorefinery system, innovative alternatives are discovered to satisfy improvement targets. Computer-aided tools are employed to support systematic data collection, mathematical model formulation, and complicated problem solving. Case studies of synthesis, design and innovation tasks illustrating the application of the framework to obtain promising integrated pulp mill-biorefinery alternatives are presented.