In this 1st week of April ’22, ProJet has completed the Factory Acceptance Test (FAT) of two (2) new Forming Fabric Cleaners and four (4) Dryer Fabric Cleaners for Domtar, Kingsport, TN, USA. Installation and start-up of the systems is expected in Q3 and Q4, ’22.
Domtar is converting the Kingsport, Tennessee, paper mill into the company's first packaging facility – a transformation that is expected to be complete in the first quarter of 2023. When complete, the mill will be able to produce and market about 600,000 tons of high-quality recycled linerboard and corrugated medium annually, making it the second-largest recycled containerboard machine in North America. The furnish will be 100% OCC, which is known for its extreme contamination on the Forming Fabrics and Dryer Felts, which is exactly the reason that Domtar chose ProJet.
The ProCleaner Type F (Forming Fabrics) use a single traversing head that cover the fabrics almost three times as fast as the existing conventional oscillating showers. Domtar expects to achieve substantial water savings because the ProJet Cleaner uses only 5.0litre/min of water; a conventional shower consumes over 200 l/min.
Furthermore, the Pro Cleaner, Type F, delivers the following operational and performance benefits:
Substantial cleaning water savings (= operational cost reduction + improved profitability): the Pro Cleaner provides superior cleaning performance, while only consuming 1.3gpm (5.0 liter/min) of water. A conventional oscillating shower consumes over 100gpm of water, leading to substantial more electrical power and waste water treatment costs.
Water mist elimination is achieved by the application of air knives that contain water mist and contamination, which is discharged through Venturi tubes and finally into a save all pan.
Targeted cleaning enables an operator to control the Cleaner for not only overall CD fabric/felt cleaning but to also apply targeted zone/strip or edge cleaning.
The Power Cleaner cleans the Dryer Fabrics continuously, 24 hours a day, as long as the machine is running. Older technologies are operated in batch cleaning mode, allowing the dryer fabrics to get dirty first, loosing permeability, and then trying to restore that permeability again. This leads to uneven permeability profiles over time, mostly leading to paper quality issues and more broke. The advantage of continuous cleaning are a more stable moisture profile, less broke and longer lifetime of fabrics. Dryer fabric contamination is on the rise due to the increasing use of secondary fibers, recycling of coated broke, increasing use of sheet fillers, an increased use of recycled mill water supplies, and the increased use of process chemicals.