Helping save Canada's forestry industry
A researcher at the University of New Brunswick is helping Canada’s forest industry improve the way it makes paper.
It’s an effort that will help save jobs and strengthen the industry.
“The pulp and paper industry was struggling well ahead of the current economic downturn,” says Dr. Kecheng Li, a professor in the chemical engineering department at UNB’s Fredericton campus.
High costs for labour, wood and energy, combined with stiff competition from Finland, Sweden, Brazil and Asian countries have resulted in mill closures across Canada and the loss of thousands of forestry jobs.
Li is a member of UNB’s Dr. Jack McKenzie Limerick Pulp and Paper Centre. He is working closely with private firms in Canada including Tembec, Irving Paper and NewPage, along with other researchers and government partners, to build a more competitive and sustainable forestry industry in Canada.
His work is focused on improving the efficiency of the pulp making process, which can result in less energy consumption and higher quality paper. This results production cost savings, in environmental benefits from reduced power consumption and reduced forestry waste.
The research has received millions of dollars in funding from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (ACOA), Atlantic Innovation Fund (AIF), Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada (NSERC) and the private sector.
The best of both worlds
Li’s latest AIF project, awarded $1.6 million from ACOA in January 2009, involves the innovative use of enzymes to pre-treat wood chips in the mechanical pulping process. Mechanical pulping involves the grinding - also known as refining - of wood material. It produces lower-quality paper such as newsprint but has a high yield - it only loses about five to 10 per cent of the wood material to waste.
But with declining newspaper readership and circulation, newsprint doesn’t fetch very much on the market these days compared to higher-quality paper like the kind used in magazines. To get that higher-quality paper, mills often use a chemical process that results in a pulp yield of only 45 per cent, meaning over half of the wood material can not be used for making paper.
For Li, that's a lot of waste.
To help improve the quality of mechanical pulping, Li and his fellow researchers have turned to a naturally-occurring substance - enzymes - that can be used to pre-treat the wood before it’s grinded.
Enzymes are proteins secreted by fungus and bacteria such as mushrooms and mould.
“In this project we will use different kinds of enzymes to remove or break down certain components of wood, which will loosen the wood structure up,” says Li.“Then when we grind wood it’s easier because the structure is not that solid. This could reduce energy consumption in refining by as much as 30 per cent.”
But energy consumption isn’t the only benefit of the process. Because the wood is softer, the grinding process is less damaging to the wood fibres, which will improve the quality of the pulp that is produced.
More efficient mills
The processes Li and other researchers, Dr. Zengtao Chen of the mechanical engineering department at UNB Fredericton and Dr. John Johnson of the biology department at UNB Saint John, are working on are expected to result in stronger wood fibres, which means the paper made from these fibres will be stronger.
That’s good news for mills.
“The average paper machine runs 1,000 metres a minute. New machines can run as much as 2,000 metres a minute,” says Li.
“If there are any defects or deficiencies in the strength of the fibres, the paper could break and if it breaks, then you have to shut down the machines.”
And getting the machines up and running again isn’t cheap.
“That’s why we want to improve the pulping process.”
A great place to work and teach
UNB, says Li, provides the kind of support researchers need to be successful. Both the Office of Research Services and the Faculty of Engineering in Fredericton have been major supporters of his work, providing expertise and assistance.
For Li, UNB is a great place not only to do research, but also to teach the next generation of scientists and engineers. Li is particularly proud of the graduate students he's mentored over the past six years.
“When you work with students you feel young and when they feel inspired, you feel fulfilled.”
