GL&V has supplied the main process equipment for Kotkamills Oy’s RCF line. The process features several novel technical solutions.
“It is a well-designed compact line, with a smart layout and allows the feeding of recovered paper bales, pulping, sorting and removal of reject fractions and wash pressing to be located in a fairly small space,” explains Production Manager for Kotkamills, Jukka Lyyra, who was in charge of the investment project.
The design capacity of the plant was originally dimensioned to be twice that of the plant’s present requirements. Following the start-up Kotkamills has, however, continued to use the RCF line in increasing amounts. At the same time, the mill has concentrated on improving its command and optimization of the pulper and the cleaning of the process equipment.
“In many places cleaning takes place once every shift, but we’ve come to the conclusion that we only need to clean once a day. At the same time we have been able to speed up the cleaning process using our own methods, which means that it now only takes us an hour to clean the process equipment once every 24 hours. To me that is a good result,” says Jukka Lyyra.
“Before the start-up, an important concern was that, in GL&V’s view, no separate coarse screening was needed for the pulp. We even reserved space for coarse screening, just in case the process supplier’s concept did not work. Well, it turned out we never needed to use that space. Our process
has been working just like GL&V said it would: when the screen plate holes are small enough, the pulper serves as a coarse screen,” says Jukka Lyyra.
-Many of the pumps and motors could be eliminated, which is a huge advantage for us in terms of energy savings.
The design capacity of Kotkamills Oy’s RCF line is 55,000 t/a of which around 20,000 t/a are presently in use. A single operator is required to oversee the process.
Kotkamills Oy is a forest-industry company specializing in laminating papers, specialcoated magazine paper and sawn products.
