Domtar Paper

A tour of the Rothschild

Paper Mill

Why I went to the Domtar Paper Mill in

Rothschild Wisconsin

As a sales person for J&A Printing I went to the Rothschild paper mill to see for

myself what Domtar was doing to make their mills more environmentally

responsible. In today’s world statistics are used too freely to support an agenda,

whether its environmentally or politically. And in today’s world we are all too

willing to accept these statistics as true and final. As a friend of mine Anne

Michelsen puts it, “Sustainability issues are so often made up of shades of gray”.

In conclusion I believe this mill is making a sustainable product from a renewable

resource in a clean environmentally sound way.

The following are the three posts from my blog http://blog.japrinting.com/on this tour.

John A Fields J&A Printing and Mailing

1155 Sherman RD Hiawatha Iowa 52233 800 793 1781 ext 291

Cell 319 721 8657 jfields@japrinting.com

Tour of the Domtar paper mill, Part one

By jfields on August 7th, 2014

Yesterday’s tour of the Domtar’s Rothschild paper mill was a real eye opener. This is a 100 year

old plant with a new biomass cogeneration plant (Wikipedia; Cogeneration or combined heat and

power is the use of a heat engine or power station to simultaneously generate electricity and

useful heat) that is a environmental wonder.

The tour started by watching a short video on plant safety, this I understood but the video also

included a environmental statement, this surprised me a little. The next part of the tour was

conducted by Eric, his title is “Pulp Operations Leader” as a twenty some year employee and

someone who grew up in the shadows of the mill he knew the people who worked there and the

history of the mill. One thing that was missing from the mill tours I had been on in the 90s was

the smell, there was very little odor other than the wood smell as the logs went through the

debarking process. I won’t get into the technical explanation but essentially the emission that

would have created the odor were scrubbed and put back into the pulp.

As the tour progressed I learned that almost everything left over from making the paper was

reused or redirected for other applications. As a FSC Certified paper mill, the logs that are used

come from local small to medium sized logging operations. Eric said that if you visited some of

the forest the trees came from you wouldn’t know there was any logging going on. Another thing

that stood out was the pride in the plant by the people who worked there. Every time Eric talked

about the new innovations that made the plant more efficient he would also talk about the jobs

these created. In the next post on this tour I will talk more on the power needed to run the mill

and where it comes from and what the biomass they burn is and where it comes from.

Domtar Paper Mill tour part two

By jfields on August 8th, 2014

The next part of the tour included the hydroelectric dam on the Wisconsin River. This well maintained

dam is over 100 years old and still produces about 10% of the electricity needed to power the mill. One

note about this dam was that it was put into operation in 1910. Floods in 1911 and again in 1912

severely damaged the dam and the mill – pretty rough start. This is also where the water is discharged

back into the river, Eric said twenty five years ago no one wanted to go near it. Now thanks to Domtar

who built a public boat ramp, its common to see fishermen right below the dam, not to mention ducks

and geese. We were then shown the digesters where the wood chips are turned into pulp, (again there

was no noticeable odor in this area) the next step is to whiten the pulp to a brightness that is more

desirable for end product, paper. The Rothschild’s mill does not make its own recycled pulp, this is

brought in from other sites and mixed with the virgin pulp to give the paper a recycled content. The

brightening is a three step process using hydrogen peroxide and oxygen. Most of the filtrate generated

from the bleach plant is recycled internally to recover the heat and residual chemicals. The excess is

treated at their waste water treatment plant which has primary and secondary treatment before it is

returned to the Wisconsin River. The next stop was the paper machine, this is where the pulp is pulled

and made into the final product, paper. The main brand made at Rothschild Mill is Cougar. This is an

uncoated, FSC certified and Rainforest Alliance Certified paper with a 10% PCW content. One of the

natural resources needed to make paper is water or in this case steam. In the past this was made by

burning fossil fuels to produce the steam but now with the new cogeneration plant on line it is comes

from burning biomass. The biomass cogenerating plant will be the third part of the tour and for me the

most exciting. I will be posting this on Monday

Domtar Paper Mill tour part three

By jfields (Edit) on August 11th, 2014

The last part of my Domtar Paper Mill tour was the Biomass Cogeneration Plant. This part of the

tour was given by Terry the operations supervisor. The plant was a joint project of Wisconsin’s

utility company, WE Energies and Domtar Paper. Its 50 megawatt generator can produce enough

power for 30,000 homes and provide the steam that is needed for the paper making process. As

we walked towards the fuel storage building, I asked, “What is the biomass made of that is stored

here?” Terry explained that most of it comes from the paper mill and the logging operations that

supply the logs. When the trees are cut the tops and branches are cut off and in the past they were

just left there to be reclaimed by the forest. Now this material is gathered and ground into a

mulch type material and sold to the cogeneration plant. On average, 50 to 75 truckloads of pre-

chipped biomass fuel is delivered to the plant each DAY. This storage facility is massive, it’s

bigger than a football field and 65 feet tall. The mulch is carried to the top by conveyer belts and

evenly dropped the length of the building. It’s then fed onto another conveyer belt that feeds it

into the biomass burner, this then produces steam that powers the turbines that generate the

electricity. The by- products are bottom ash removed from the bottom of the boiler (mostly sand

and small pebbles that come with the biomass) and these are used mostly for construction fill

projects, fly ash collected from the boiler flue gas and used mostly for fertilizing farm fields. The

final stage before the smoke stack is a dust collector, this is where any fine particles are filtered

out and even this is collected for other uses. As the pictures of the smoke stack show there is

virtually no visible emissions from this plant, even the cooling tower is equipped with abatement

technology to reduce visible water vapor plumes.

I would like to thank all my tour guides, Terry, Brian and Eric. You could fell the pride in what

they have accomplished here at the Domtar paper mill. To learn more about Domtar’s

commitment to sustainability you can go to http://www.domtar.com/