SCA's expanded Östrand pulp mill located Timrå, Sweden, had its start-up in 2018. With this project, SCA Östrand doubled its production capacity from 430,000 tonnes to 900,000 tonnes per year and it became the largest production line for bleached softwood kraft pulp in the world. The massive project, also known as Helios, is one of the largest industrial investments in Sweden to date.
The startup was very successful, and we really worked well as a team, both internally in SCA and together with Valmet.”
Daniel Solberg, SCA’s process manager for the fiberline
Summary:
Location
Timrå, Northern Sweden
Customer challenge
Double the production capacity, without disturbing the production of the existing mill and without any serious accidents. The extensive project had 9 sub-projects, and a total of 7,900 people taking care of everything from construction work, assembly, and erection, through to startup and commissioning of the finished pulp mill.
Solution
Valmet's supply scope included:
Cooking plant
The world's largest softwood digester
CompactCooking™ – Valmet’s continuous cooking system that gives higher pulp yield, lower rejects and reduced environmental impact.
Fiberline
DeltaCombi™ – Coarse screening and fine screening in a single housing. CombiScreen™ has high shive removal efficiency and excellent runability
OxyTrac™ delignification with two reaction stages. Valmet’s OxyTrac™ system removes up to 65-70% of the lignin remaining after cooking
State-of-the-art bleach plant with a customized and optimized bleaching sequence. SCA Östrand produces both TCF (totally chlorine-free) and ECF (elemental chlorine-free) pulp
TwinRoll™ Evolution pulp washers, with high washing efficiency, availability and output consistency, producing low effluent -volumes that are achievable only with press-based bleaching
Evaporation
Valmet Super Concentrator with internal liquor heat treatment for stable production of high dry solids liquor. This increases steam generation in the recovery boiler and improves the mill’s overall energy efficiency
Valmet TUBEL technology allows easy washing, resulting in -highest availability in the evaporation plant
Results
With Helios completed, Östrand’s production capacity has doubled to 900,000 tonnes of bleached softwood pulp per year, with the future possibility to expand to one million tonnes. “The successful result means we’ve been able to build the world’s largest softwood pulp line, on budget and on time", says Ingela Ekebro, the President for Project Helios for SCA.
