Reducing Energy Costs and Carbon Emissions

Situation

A mill had experienced massive increases in their energy costs due to a rapid rise in oil and gas prices. A portion of the mill's energy was generated from burning waste bark. As a source of energy, bark is much more cost effective, and also dramatically reduces carbon emissions.

Complications

The company believed that their current boilers were at maximum capacity and therefore could not burn more bark. A multi-million dollar capital request was in the works to help increase the capability, but this project would take several years before it would start to generate savings. The pressure was on now.

"This power-boiler is over 40 years old and is at capacity. It cannot burn bark and meet today's tighter environmental restrictions without burning oil at the same time."
Senior Engineering Manager

Results

In just 8 weeks the team was able to increase the amount of energy generated by burning bark by 140%. This combined with the custom improvement process that the team developed, allowed the company to drive further results and reduce fossil-fuel CO2 emissions by 150,000 tons/yr - the equivalent of removing over 30,000 cars from the roadways.

"We were able to drive more improvement through this process than was promised by the $8 million capital project. The financial impact of this project is overwhelming. This is reducing our energy cost even though gas and oil prices have doubled."
Vice President & General Manager