Fluctuating raw water quality costs more than you think – here’s how to fix it
Fluctuating raw water quality costs more than you think – here’s how to fix it
How much are unpredictable raw water conditions costing your operations in chemical overuse and production inefficiencies? Consistent raw water quality is critical for smoothly running pulp and paper processes, but achieving it cost-efficiently is a practical challenge. Kemira KemConnect® Raw Water Treatment solves this problem through real-time visibility and automated control.
Article takeaways
Raw water quality variations create fundamental challenges for stable water treatment at pulp and paper mills.
Inefficient treatment practices force mills into costly chemical over-treatment while still experiencing contamination spikes that impact production.
Kemira KemConnect® RWT provides 24/7 automated monitoring and chemical dosing based on real-time water quality measurements.
One mill eliminated raw water quality excursions entirely while reducing chemical consumtion and achieving 15% reduction in chemical cost.
Consider this familiar scenario: our customer, an integrated pulp and board mill, sources their raw water from a nearby river. While the mill usually achieves acceptable quality in purified water, they face two challenges. First, maintaining acceptable water quality comes at a price. The mill overuses treatment chemicals in the process, which significantly increases their operational costs. Second, despite high chemical consumption, they experience periodic spikes in contaminants passing through the treatment process, impacting pulp washing efficiency and downstream production.
Pulp and paper mills taking in raw water from natural water bodies commonly face this problem, rooted in the nature of their water source. Seasonal and weather-driven variations in organic load create a fundamental challenge for operations targeting stable water quality. The standard practice of occasional manual sampling and laboratory analysis inevitably creates delays between water quality fluctuations and corrective actions at the water treatment plant.
As a result, treatment plants are often forced into preventive over-treatment or risk water quality excursions that compromise process efficiency and runnability and increase deposition risk in downstream production. Either way, both operational efficiency and the bottom line suffer.
Beyond “good enough” raw water treatment
The mill in question overcame these challenges with Kemira KemConnect® Raw Water Treatment (RWT) service. This digital solution transforms raw water treatment through real-time monitoring and automated chemical management, ensuring stable water quality and cost efficiency.
KemConnect RWT monitors water parameters from up to four sample points, measuring organic compounds, suspended solids, and turbidity in both incoming and treated raw water. Using these real-time measurements, the service automatically adjusts the dosing of coagulants, flocculants, and pH-balancing chemicals to the treatment process to achieve the agreed target quality for purified water. The mill’s automation system controls the chemical dosing pump, with setpoints coming from the online KemConnect unit. Personnel access real-time performance metrics and KPI tracking through the secure web-based KemConnect portal.
The patented online measuring equipment and algorithms for automated dosing are built on Kemira experts’ chemistry and application expertise, and process know-how. The KemConnect RWT service is ISO 27001 certified for information security management and data protection.
Measurable results: Water quality up, chemical consumption down
With 24/7 visibility into both raw water quality and treatment process performance, the mill now achieves target quality consistently with optimized chemical usage. Since implementing KemConnect RWT service, quality excursions in purified water have been eliminated. The combination of real-time monitoring and control with high-performing Kemira FennoFlocTM coagulants ensures stable water quality for downstream processes regardless of fluctuating raw water conditions.
Improved raw water treatment in numbers
Water quality in specifications
98%
of time
Chemical costs
-15%
savings
Contaminant removal efficiency
+50%
per kg of chemical used
Simultaneously, the mill reduced treatment chemical consumption significantly, generating substantial savings in operational costs. By replacing constant treatment chemical dosage with the dynamic approach that adjusts dosing based on real-time process needs, chemical usage decreased considerably. Furthermore, chemical efficiency improved, allowing the mill to maximize contaminant removal from each unit of chemical applied in the treatment process.
Would KemConnect RWT benefit your operations?
KemConnect RWT can benefit your pulp and paper operations if you’re experiencing:
Fluctuating raw water quality
High chemical costs for water treatment
Periodic water quality issues despite treatment efforts
Lack of resources for water quality optimization
Your first step toward consistent water quality and reduced treatment chemical costs is a complimentary raw water treatment plant audit. Our application expert will evaluate your current operations, benchmark your chemically purified water quality against industry best practices, and provide tailored recommendations to improve your raw water treatment performance.
The right dose of chemicals to the right place at the right time. The recipe for optimized water treatment performance at a pulp or paper mill is simple, but the varying conditions make it difficult in practice.
Mari Zabihian, Director, Global Digital Services at Kemira, discusses the change in the papermill working culture when algorithms and people join forces and start learning from each other.
