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Feb 23rd, 2021
Anne Wainscott-Sargent
Paper mills use large amounts of water in their production processes and need new methods to improve sustainability.
Georgia Tech
The U.S. pulp and paper industry uses large quantities of water to produce cellulose pulp from trees. The water leaving the pulping process contains a number of organic byproducts and inorganic chemicals. To reuse the water and the chemicals, paper mills rely on steam-fed evaporators that boil up the water and separate it from the chemicals.
Water separation by evaporators is effective but uses large amounts of energy. That s significant given that the United States currently is the world s second-largest producer of paper and paperboard. The country s approximately 100 paper mills are estimated to use about 0.2 quads (a quad is a quadrillion BTUs) of energy per year for water recycling, making it one of the most energy-intensive chemica
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