Aylesford Newsprint bailed out by emergency water treatment

Aylesford, UK - Aylesford Newsprint turned to an emergency mobile facility when the water treatment plant failed at its mill, which supplies around 400 kilotonnes per annum of recycled newsprint to national, regional and European press rooms.

Steam and power for the Kent mill is supplied by an on-site combined heat & power plant. The boiler is supplied with 120m3/h of water, which is taken from the site borehole and purified using an ion exchange deionisation plant. A mistake with a chemical delivery resulted in the steam raising plant being taken off line until the problem could be resolved.

As a contingency measure, the company activated a mobile demineralisation plant, employing Aquamove Moro mobile reverse osmosis units and MODI ion exchange system from ELGA Process Water. The equipment is installed in standard containers which are insulated and supplied with heating, lighting and all necessary safety equipment. They provide pure water any time and any where for a wide range of requirements from emergency pure water supplies, to rental for capacity management, maintenance shut downs or outage cover, with 24 hour, 7 days a week response.

“We didn’t at first, know what had happened but with only the reserve feedwater tank, the boiler would run out of water within 24 hours,” ”, according to John Tyler of Aylesford Newsprint. ”ELGA Process Water provided an instant response with the Aquamove mobile plant fleet which was on site at Aylesford by Saturday morning to keep the mill going ... We didn’t lose any production [and] London’s Sunday papers were on the news stands as usual."