A Method to Reduce Steam Consumption of ECF Bleaching Based on Operation Optimizing

Development of paper industry has been restricted by resources, energy and environment deeply; further reducing energy consumption becomes an urgent problem to be solved. In this paper, the calculating model of steam consumption in bleaching process is established under the premise of ensuring product quality and controlling bleaching cost. Then, an optimization model for minimizing steam consumption is constructed. Compared with before optimization, the steam consumption of the optimized bleaching system reduced by 19.48% (0.5014 t/adt) at a loss of 0.11% brightness (0.1 ISO%) and 5.17% viscosity (33 mL/g). The amount of chemicals should be increased to ensure the quality of the pulp while decreasing the bleaching temperature to reduce steam consumption, the cost of bleaching pulp has decreased by 1.62% (3.19 USD/adt) after optimization. The verification experiments showed all the pulp quality indices can meet the requirements of bleached pulp.