Paper Mill Raw Material Load-In Filter Achieves $25,000 Return On Investment (ROI).
Ask Filter Man
every mill could use filtration equipment in is the raw material
load-in points. This helps with Quality Control (QC), as well as
improve the return on investment (ROI).
Many lean manufacturing initiatives dictate the need to eliminate
unacceptable raw materials at the beginning of the process, before the
contaminated items are carried further down the process line. This is a
forward-thinking solution that all Paper Mills should incorporate. And
why not? It saves money in the long-run.
SITUATION
A Texas paper mill had to shutdown a machine because the latex they
received was off spec, and the mill did not filter it out of the rail
car upon receipt.
Many mills rely on raw material suppliers to maintain high QC standards
to ensure the components they receive are of acceptable quality. Often
times, however, the materials are within acceptable quality guidelines
when they leave the producer's plant but are contaminated in the
tanker truck, rail car, or product tote en route to the mill.
The end result is the mill takes the product in -- does not filter it
at the time of arrival -- and simply puts it into a storage tank. When
the component gets mixed to make the final product and the final
product has debris in it, the mill has to try to determine which of the
half dozen components the debris came in.
These products will include, but not be limited to: latex, wet end
starch, defoamers, dyes, alum, clays, PCC and GCC.
RONNINGEN-PETTER SOLUTION
A simple solution is to install a filter (DCF 800 /1600 self cleaning
filters, bag filter, and etcetera) as the product is off-loaded.
This keeps the debris outside of the mill. This also becomes an
effective QC tool for the mill. When the tanker truck or rail car
finishes unloading, all they have to do is look at the filter media to
determine how much debris was taken out of the product.
If the debris type and size is unacceptable, the mill needs to contact
the component supplier for resolution. In addition, it may behoove the
Paper Mill to mandate that their component supplier filter their
load-out line before shipping the items to the Paper Mill.
RESULTS
Ronningen-Petter was able to provide a DCF-1600 for this application,
and the latex issue did not appear again.
Assuming $25,000 per hour of machine shutdown, this was a tremendous
ROI for the Paper Mill.
-- by Ask Filter Man
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