Tembec to Pump Another C$15 Million into Temiscaming Waste Treatment Facilities
Tembec Inc. has announced that it will be investing more than C$15 million to upgrade its waste treatment operations at Temiscaming, Que., which serves the company's bleached sulfite dissolving and specialty market pulp mill, bleached chemi-thermomechanical (BCTMP) mill, and bleached lightweight coated paperboard and linerboard mill in the immediate area. Tembec's Temiscaming operations also include a sawmill, ethanol refinery, resin plant, and lignosulfate plants that convert a portion of the waste treatment streams to marketable by-products.
In addition to processing effluents from Tembec's mill's and plants, the company's waste treatment plant handles all of the municipal effluents for the town of Temiscaming. It was built in 1990-92 at a cost of $40 million, and was intended to be the final step in the company's C$200 million environmental program to bring the Temiscaming operations into compliance with Canadian pulp and paper industry regulations set to promulgate in 1992. The regulations were delayed until late 1995, and despite the pre-regulation startup and subsequent investments of C$12 million, the facility is still not able to handle 100% of the effluent it receives. However, the upgrades have cut the site's effluent BOD by more than 85% since startup.
The newly committed $15 million will be used to double the facility's secondary waste treatment clarifier (C$6.1 million), allowing 100% of the site's effluent to be treated on a consistent basis. Work on this clarifier is underway and is expected to be completed by the end of this year. The remaining $9 million will be spent on internal process changes to improve safety conditions. The two-clarifier system uses oxygen-activated sludge treatment, and final sludge is burned in the mill's power boiler, along with bark, oil, and natural gas.
The Temiscaming complex can produce 165,000 metric tons per year (mtpy) of specialty cellulose and dissolving pulp using an ammonium base sulfite cooking process with hardwood and softwood chips in 11 batch digesters. A broad range of pulp products is made at this mill, from low viscosity to ultrahigh viscosity for ethers, with a wide range of purity from 89% to 95% alpha cellulose. The mill has three fourdrinier pulp dryers (172-in., 146-in., 98-in.), with traditional drum dryers.
The Temcell pulp division has a chlorine-free BCTMP capacity of 250,000 mtpy, using aspen, birch, maple, and spruce chips. The Temcell pulps have a broad range of freeness, low shive content, and high brightness levels to 87 ISO. Super washed grades are made for use with lightweight, coated papers and high-bulk grades are produced for specialty paper and paperboard applications. The pulps are dried using two Flakt two-stage flash dryers for paper pulps and a fourdrinier machine with traditional dryer drums for the fluff pulps.
The Temboard mill at Temiscaming produces lightweight coated printing grades of boards for use in commercial printing and publishing, such as annual reports, directory and paperback book covers, lottery tickets, magazine inserts, etc. The low-density, high bulk specialty bleached linerboard is for use in point-of-purchase displays and high quality, litho-laminated corrugated cartons. The mill also makes a SBS (solid bleached sulfate) grade for use in cosmetic, pharmaceutical and tobacco packaging. The fourdrinier machine at this mill has two on-machine coaters.
Altogether, Tembec operates 25 manufacturing sites across Canada, producing lumber, pulp, newsprint, paperboard, and oriented strandboard.