CleanTech for Pulp and Paper Mills with Financing From the Swedish Energy Agency

Heat Management has been at the forefront of revolutionizing the development of fouling prevention in industrial boilers. CleanTech is our passion and to push our products and the value for customers beyond technical specification. By setting the standard for boiler performance with patented solutions, and not being content with how boiler cleaning has been done in the past we help the industry to reach a new level.

This has now been recognized by the Swedish Energy Agency and an initiative to help pulp and paper mills invest in modern CleanTech solutions has been initiated.

The need to optimize boiler cleaning operations 

A recovery boiler has heat transfer surfaces inside that are exposed to ashes in the flue gas. It is desirable to keep the fouling rate as low as possible to be able to operate the boiler for as long time per year as possible. It is also important to keep the heat transfer surfaces clean to the utmost extent in order to have high boiler efficiency and to use as little steam for sootblowing as possible. 

Since the recovery boiler is at the very heart of pulp and paper mills operations, it is important to investigate new ways of optimizing operations. Typically, steam sootblowing uses 5-10% of the produced steam from the recovery boiler to clean the heat exchangers. Therefore, there is great potential for savings and improvements from optimizing these systems.

Our current solutions for fouling prevention

Fouling leads to lower energy efficiency, preventing this has always been a Heat Managements specialty through the Infrasound cleaning system and in later years, also the High Impact Sootblowing System (HISS™). 

Infrasound cleaning uses a low-frequency sound to remove the accumulated deposits from boiler surfaces. Our infrasound cleaners have been proven to improve the profitability of boilers because of more efficient soot cleaning, reducing, or eliminating the need for traditional methods such as steam soot blowing and manual cleaning.

The patented High Impact Sootblowing System (HISS™) disrupts the “how we have always done it” approach to energy-intensive steam sootblowing. By operating the existing steam sootblowing system in a smarter and less wasteful way, half the steam and half the time can be saved. This leads to increased boiler efficiency, availability, and a lifetime without installing any new sootblowers or rebuilding the boiler.

Developing new CleanTech solutions

The Swedish Energy Agency has studied Heat Managements solution proposal and has pledged finances to help pulp and paper mills reduce their environmental impact. 

The concept revolves around automatic monitoring, analysis, and early warnings regarding e.g., carryover in recovery boilers combustion. The monitoring is enabled by a patented solution for filming the lances that regularly enter the boiler for steam cleaning.

By supervising carryover, suspension combustion, high carbonate release, and other technical combustion phenomena, the recovery boiler can be operated with higher availability and with less fouling of heating surfaces. 

This supervision will lay the foundation for mills to track and steer the combustion but also adjust specific strategies in their sootblowing for their boiler heat exchangers. 

The project will also involve researchers from “The Research Institutes of Sweden” (RISE). One team at RISE will perform calculations of climate use related to increasing the availability of a boiler-related to sootblowing less and keeping heat transfer surfaces cleaner. 

Another team from RISE will analyze the deposits collected on the sootblower lances, for confirmation of the combustion phenomena shown by the image analysis system and operational data from the boiler.

The constant development of the CleanTech concept

The concept is planned to target recovery boilers in pulp and paper mills. However, after implementation of the solution, it can be developed and tailored to power plants with boilers fuelled by e.g., waste and biofuel.