Enabling a circular economy for our customers

Valmet has an important role in the circular economy by offering customers technology and services for converting renewable resources into sustainable products, such as pulp, paper, board and bioenergy.

With our solutions, customers can use and recover energy, water and chemicals more efficiently or minimize waste by using production side-streams from other applications, processes or even industries. Our energy technologies enable the conversion of waste to energy, and our comprehensive services and automation help customers to utilize these technologies for decades.

Through modular machine design and smart engineering, we enable equipment to have multiple uses. Well-planned maintenance and partial replacements or conversions can significantly prolong the lifetime of equipment.

Comprehensive offering promoting circularity

We have categorized our customer solutions under four main areas from a circular economy point of view: 

• Resource efficiency with focus on improved and optimized use of resources and on flexible energy production
• Closed circles
• Longer circulation with focus on design enabling reuse and conversion and on maintenance and modernization of production technology
• Cascaded use across industries

Resource efficiency

Improved and optimized use of resources

Resource efficiency can be improved through technology, automation and maintenance. Significant savings in energy, water and raw materials can be achieved through Valmet’s technologies, such as OptiConcept M paper and board machines, as well as Advantage DCT and Advantage NTT tissue machines.

Valmet’s Industrial Internet solutions enable data analytics to detect production inefficiencies and optimize material use.

In addition, performance agreements provide a comprehensive approach to improve mill-wide production efficiency.

Flexible energy production

Valmet’s technologies for flexible energy production reduce the need for non-renewable fuels as well as the amount of waste.

Multi-fuel boilers enhance fuel flexibility and can operate on fuel mixtures ranging from 100% coal to 100% biomass. Bubbling fluidized bed boilers use biomass and peat as fuel while circulating fluidized bed boilers enable wider flexibility in the fuel sources used and allow the use of fuels with varying energy value and moisture content. Waste-to-energy solutions use either fluidized bed boiler or gasification technologies and enable efficient energy recovery.

Closed circles

Closed circles are enabled through our solutions for on-site recovery of energy and chemicals that allow materials to circulate longer, reducing the need for virgin materials. Our recovery islands enable efficient recovery of chemicals and energy in a pulp mill.

We also offer a solution for sulphur recovery from odorous gases, enabling on-site production of sulphuric acid.

The condensate water recycling and the recovery of paper pigments are examples of our internal recycling and recovery solutions in our own operations.

Longer circulation

Design enabling reuse and conversion

To achieve longer circulation of materials, we focus on modular design and smart engineering that enable multiple uses of the same equipment, reuse or conversion of the production technology at our customers’ sites. For example, paper machines can be converted to board production, or machines can be dissembled and reassembled in another location. The flexible design also allows customers to change their production based on market needs – such as the level of demand or price.

Maintenance and modernization of technology

In addition, the well-planned maintenance and partial replacements can also prolong equipment lifetime and thus enable longer circulation of materials. Our offering covers preventive maintenance planning, refiner segments, rolls and certain wear parts that can be refurbished and reused, and modernization of individual process parts or complete mills and power plants. Also, we can modify boilers so that they can change from using coal to utilizing biomass.

Cascaded use across industries

To promote cascaded use across industries we offer solutions for new bio-based products that decrease the need for non-renewable materials. Some examples of these are our LignoBoost technology enabling the extraction of lignin and technologies for bioethanol, bio-coal and bio-oil production.

With our solutions, customers can use and recover energy, water and chemicals more efficiently or minimize waste by using production sidestreams from other applications, processes or even industries. Our energy technologies enable the conversion of waste to energy, and our comprehensive services and automation help customers utilize these technologies for decades.