Give water a second life - Pulp & Paper

Today, I would like to highlight the work of my colleagues Sven, Luis, Zamir, Matt and Anne* on wastewater treatment and water reuse. As you may all be aware, the pulp and paper manufacturing are two very water intensive processes that produce large quantities of wastewater. The water used in pulp and paper mills ranges from 5 to 100 m3 per tonne of paper produced depending on the characteristics of the substrate, type of produced paper and the extent of water reuse [1].

Tighter environmental regulations, increasing public awareness and rising water prices have forced the P&P manufacturers to switch from conventional end-of-pipe wastewater treatment techniques to more sophisticated ones allowing to reuse more water and meet current environmental standards without impacting CAPEX and OPEX.

Wastewater from Pulp & paper mills is challenging for subsequent treatment because of:

• high Biochemical and Chemical Oxygen Demand (BOD and COD)
• high suspended solids
• high additives content such as acids, bases and starch.

Membrane technologies have been commercially applied in the industry as early as the 1970’s [2]. Commonly used in chemical recovery and treatment of bleaching effluents, membranes like ultra-filtration, nano-filtration & reverse osmosis have found increasing applications in closing the loops in the P&P industry [3].

Membrane bioreactors (MBRs), which combine biological treatment with ultra-filtration membranes to provide an absolute barrier to contaminants, are a robust technology that delivers significant commercial benefits to the pulp & paper industry by increasing water reuse while meeting the current and anticipated future regulatory requirements. The significantly smaller size of MBRs coupled with a modular design, allows for expansion that is impossible with conventional technologies. With MBRs, plants can plan and stage their expansion plans knowing that reliable and proven solutions are available to scale up their water treatment and reuse in line with their demands.

SUEZ has provided many MBR plants to different industries across Europe and globally. One of the most modern and biggest MBRs to treat effluent from a pulp mill has been started up in late 2017. The plant is treating the combined effluent from a KRAFT pulping process producing pulp from Eucalyptus.

Follow this link for more information: https://bit.ly/2RZoiNb

We believe that MBR technology is an excellent solution to treat water for reuse, decrease discharge volumes and limit the amount of fresh water into the process. In cases where further polishing is required, MBR should be the technology of choice for pulp & paper producers. With its full solid retention and minimization of the fouling potential, MBR provides the best in class pre-treatment to any downstream polishing technology, such as ozonation, NF, RO or EDR. SUEZ is currently running trials with various desalination and lignin removal technologies downstream of the MBR process to meet more stringent discharge qualities (e.g. COD < 100 mg/L) or enabling reuse of treated effluents and further reducing the water footprint of the P&P industry.

In other words: give water a second life!

For more information please visit our website: https://bit.ly/2Z06kvo

#waterreuse #MBR #recycling #sustainability #membrane

* Extract from the technical paper: ZEEWEED MBR technology to treat effluent from Pulp & Paper. Thanks to Sven Baumgarten (Engineering manager at Suez), Luis Urrutia (Lead sales manager Iberia at Suez), Zamir Alam (Lead Engineer at Suez), Matt Boczkowski (Marketing director at Suez) and Anne Petitimbert (Pulp and Paper marketing manager at Suez).

References

[1] Renata Toczy?owska-Mamińska (2017) Limits and perspectives of pulp and paper industry wastewater treatment – A review. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews Volume 78, October 2017, Pages 764-772

[2] S. Adnan, M. Hoang, and H. Wang (2009) Research, development and application of membrane technology in the pulp and paper industry. 63rd APPITA Conference, Melbourne, Australia

[3] Simstich and Oller (2010) Membrane technology for the future treatment of paper mill effluents – chances and challenges of further system closure. Water Science & Technology 62(9), 2190-2197.