The paper industry is a rapidly growing sector worldwide. It includes the manufacturing activity of producing paper and cardboard for various uses such as hygienic-sanitary paper (tissue), paperboard for packaging, and industrial technical papers. The production process of this industry is highly energy intensive as it involves multiple processes, from the transformation of the raw material to the spreading and drying of the dough, to the operation of creating the paper rolls, to the transformation into the finished product. A paper mill produces on average 1440 km of paper per day, approximately 1 km/minute.
Uniconfort has been chosen to supply biomass power plants serving this process in Portugal and Spain.
In Portugal, a leading company in the tissue paper sector has installed a Uniconfort boiler at its headquarter to produce the steam necessary for its production process. The boiler produces 20 tons/h of steam at 23 bar. Thanks to Uniconfort's knowhow and the ability to manage unconventional biomass, the paper mill is now able to valorise its process waste and achieve economic benefits by reducing the waste disposal costs and energy costs as well. In addition to producing steam, the boiler produces hot water to serve a dryer to convert the paper mill sludge into a fuel that would otherwise be impossible to use: thanks to this arrangement, the fuel used by the customer is a mix of paper mill sludge with 8 % humidity and local biomass (wood chips and bark).
In Spain, a large paper company with multiple offices across the Country is installing three Uniconfort biomass plants to produce thermal energy in three different production sites. The plants will be powered by local wood chips and will produce 100% of the thermal energy needed for the company's factories. In each plant a different boiler will be installed to produce 8 tons/h, 10 tons/h, 12 tons/h of steam at 15.5 bar. The plants will be fed with a total of 54,000 tonnes of material per year, obtained from short supply chain biomass, from areas close to the factories with a traceability certificate and which will boost employment and the economy of the rural area.