BARCODING, LABELLING & PACKAGING FOXMERE The rising e-commerce effect
Tom Cash, director of automation parts supplier, Foxmere, explains how automation is helping the paper and pulp industry meet its environmental requirements.
A
ccording to statista, packaging, paper and paperboard production has increased
266.5 million metric tonnes in 2021 and a value of 265.03 million metric tonnes in 2022. The biggest growth driver? The rise of e-commerce… The e-commerce industry is booming. In
2023, global retail e-commerce sales reached an estimated USD 5.8 trillion, and predictions 56% in the years to come. Such aggressive growth, of course, drives up the need for paper and cardboard packaging. And as living standards worldwide evolve, the demand for personal hygiene products like tissues, toilet paper and wipes also increase. Needless to say, the pulp and paper industry
is thriving and, in Europe alone, the paper and pulp industry uses approximately 1,200 paper machines, each of which produces an average of 80,000 tonnes of paper a year.
REDUCING WATER USAGE Unfortunately, however, the biproduct of this high-volume production is high-volume waste. In fact, producing just one piece of A4 paper requires 10 litres of water, as reported by The World Counts. The paper manufacturing process involves
The pulping step, in particular, requires
transportation and dilution of chemicals. Here, down into a pulp, which is then used to produce paper.
The pulp is then poured onto a wire mesh screen to drain water away, in a process called forming. This step transforms the pulp into a
continuous sheet of paper on a paper machine, is pressed to remove even more water. These two steps alone help to visualise how
much water is used during the production like closed-loop water systems, are essential for minimising water usage in paper manufacturing. In a closed-loop water system, sensors
through various stages of the papermaking process. Based on sensor data, control systems for reuse.
Robotics may also be employed for tasks like equipment maintenance to enhance system
ENERGY CONSUMPTION Paper manufacturing also requires extensive heat due to the large amounts of water that need to be evaporated during the drying process. According to IEA, drying accounts for 70% of the energy use in this sector.
Heat pumps are an excellent solution for reducing heat waste. They transfer heat from one place to another using a refrigerant. In paper manufacturing, they can reuse latent heat from the drying process to produce steam for further drying.
In fact, heat pumps are so effective that the 24 April 2024 Irish Manufacturing
European Heat-Pump Association (EHPA) and the Confederation of the European Paper Industries (Cepi) have teamed up to lay the groundwork for heat pumps to be integrated in Europe’s paper mills.
This comes as a joint EHPA-Cepi working group calculated the potential energy savings and estimated that heat pumps can lead to a reduction in energy demand for drying by 50%, as well as potentially reducing emissions via fuel substitution. What’s more, it is also believed that 65% of process heat in the European paper industry can be supplied by heat pumps that make use of the waste heat sources inside production processes. There is a wealth of energy and money to
be saved, and that’s before realising that the European paper and pulp industry currently uses about 1,200 paper machines. Yet the role automation can play in the industry meeting its environmental requirements cannot be overlooked, especially at these volumes. And you don’t have to take our word for it, with Deskera stating that automation can reduce energy consumption in the paper industry by up to 20%.
temperature, pressure and quality in closed- loop systems or programmable logic controllers (PLCs) to manage the operation of heat pumps, manufacturers must lean on a parts supplier they can trust.
www.irish-manufacturing.com
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