Heat exchanger protection at Smurfit Kappa plant

Birmingham, UK - Smurfit Kappa has installed a Bollfilter 6.18 automatic filtration system to protect the heat exchanger at a new water treatment plant at its regional recycling plant in Birmingham. The 130-year-old Mount Street paper mill produces 200 kilotonnes of liner and fluting paper from recycled card and paper sourced from local authority and trade waste.

The recycling process produces three cubic metres of water effluent per tonne of paper. This waste water is treated in a new, state of the art water treatment plant, which removes COD (Chemical Oxygen Demand) by means of anaerobic digestion. This biological process must be carried out at a constant temperature of 38°C, 10°C l ess than the normal temperature of the recycled waste water.

A heat exchanger system is used to remove the excess heat, which is then used in other parts of the plant. The wide gap plate exchanger must be protected from risk of damage from particulates in the raw water. Smurfit Kappa uses two filtration processes to achieve this: firstly a DAF Dissolved Air Flotation System, which uses flocculants to remove plastics and larger contaminants; and secondly an automatic, self-cleaning Bollfilter System, which filters down to 1mm.

“Since installing the anaerobic system, we have improved the quality of our waste water and dramatically reduced our water discharge costs,” said project manager Austin Jakeman. “As the heat exchangers need to constantly maintain the correct water temperature, it is vital that they are protected from damage and risk of down-time.”