Proven partners take on a new challenge together.

“This is a relationship built on trust.” Timo Piilonen, Senior Vice President of Metsä-Botnia (left) discusses with Jukka Sainiemi, Project Director from Andritz. The Fray Bentos facility is modern in every way - from the production technology in the mill to the gleaming office building which provides ample room for people to collaborate.

“The Finnish way of doing things is based upon trust,” says Timo Piilonen, Senior Vice President of Metsä-Botnia and the leader of the Fray Bentos greenfield project. “From the beginning, we had a mixed organization of Andritz and Botnia – there was no buyer and no supplier.”

Of course, this kind of relationship was not built overnight.  Andritz supplied technology for Metsä-Botnia’s first greenfield mill (Kaskinen) in the 1970’s, and has supplied systems to all five mills in Finland.  In addition, Andritz has provided maintenance development services to Botnia for many years.

So, it was logical for Botnia to partner with Andritz for its most grand collaboration to date – the very large greenfield kraft pulp mill in Uruguay.  “Uruguay does not have a tradition of pulp and paper production, or even large process industries,” Piilonen says.  “We knew there would be challenges in getting resources and materials to the site.  That is why we wanted proven partners there with us. With Andritz, we formed one organization with common targets and a very open way of working.”

 Looking for opportunities

A few years ago, Piilonen was chosen to lead a team to investigate Metsä-Botnia’s production opportunities outside Finland.  In 2003, Botnia purchased a 60% share of Compania Forestal OrientalTwo species of eucalyptus are mixed for Botnia’s pulp.  Botnia’s subsidiary, Forestal Oriental, supplies about 70% of the mill’s requirements from its FSC certified plantations.   S.A. (FOSA) from Shell, with the remaining shares owned by UPM.  Also in 2003, Piilonen and his team performed a pre-feasibility study for citing a new pulp mill near Fray Bentos.  In 2004, the first environmental impact study was presented to government officials.

The project gained momentum when environmental permits were granted in March 2005.  The Botnia board of directors approved the investment for the Fray Bentos mill.  At a cost of about $1.2 billion, this became the company’s largest investment outside Finland.  

 The Fray Bentos project

When a signed letter of intent was received from Botnia in May 2005, Andritz immediately set its project team in motion.  Working with Project Director Jukka Sainiemi was a global team of project managers for each key process area, supported by technical experts, a global procurement team, site managers, and commissioning specialists.

“A fast start for the engineering was crucial for a successful project,” Sainiemi says. “Botnia involved about 20 people from their team, supported by their engineering consultant and, of course, by Andritz.  We were responsible for the basic engineering for each of our process islands. The engineering work was performed in Finland.”

During the time that Andritz’s project team was preparing quotations for the technology, its service team was putting together a 10-year maintenance plan and rough cost estimates, according to Risto Hämälainen, Senior Vice President, Pulp and Paper Mill Maintenance.  

“In September 2005, Botnia signed an agreement with us to supply all mill maintenance services for a five-year period,” Hämälainen says.  “This gave the opportunity for Andritz Capital and Service specialists to work side-by-side to ensure that long-term maintenance aspects of the equipment were considered from the very beginning.”

The project teams from Botnia and Andritz moved from Finland to Fray Bentos in the summer of 2006.  Construction of the mill involved nearly 5000 construction workers who lived in Fray Bentos during the two-year build-up.  Hans Unger, an Andritz site manager from Graz, likened the scene to a “miniature United Nations” with people from 25 countries working together to build this massive mill.  Even with this, the majority of workers came from Uruguay – between 70-80% during the construction peak period were Uruguayans.  Local companies from Uruguay participated in the general assembly work in all technical areas for which Andritz had responsibility.  

 Political opposition

The Fray Bentos mill is sited next to a river which forms the border between Uruguay and Argentina.  The original announcement of plans to build a pulp mill in Uruguay (by the Spanish company ENCE in 2003) was met with strong opposition by Asamblea Ciudadana de Gualeguaychu, a citizen’s movement in Argentina.  Asamblea was concerned about how Uruguay would be able to monitor the environmental performance of such a large mill.  Later, when Botnia also announced plans to build, the debate escalated to a national level.  The government of Argentina took the offensive at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, claiming that Uruguay had violated a border treaty between the two countries.

“The Uruguayan people are now confident about what we are doing here,” says Sergio Veintemilla“The Uruguayan people are now confident about what we are doing here,” says Sergio Veintemilla, a Uruguayan and Service Manager for the chemical recovery and energy areas of the mill (right).  Here he discusses preventive maintenance plans with Frederico Mazzilli, of Andritz’s maintenance group., a Uruguayan and Service Manager for the chemical recovery and energy areas of the mill.  “There are perhaps some other people focused on the politics; we are focused on our work here.  This mill has the latest technology in all the disciplines and is among the safest in the world.”

 First chips to the digester

The mill was thoroughly commissioned before its actual start-up.  Operators were fully trained and ready, in part thanks to the Andritz group´s IDEAS Dynamic Process Simulator.  When Botnia received the final permit to start-up the mill in November, the start-up crews were eager to spring into action.  Thursday night (8 November), the oil burners in the massive Andritz recovery boiler were fired up and the digester was filled with liquor for the first time.  Twenty-four hours later, chips began feeding to the digester.  On Monday afternoon, the first sheets of dried prime quality pulp were coming from the Andritz baling line.

From that moment, according to Mill Manager Sami Saarela

“This mill has the most modern technology and the systems are easy to operate.”
Sami Saarela, Mill Manager at Fray Bentos.

, progress has been rapid and stable.  “We really worked to simplify the design of this mill, and it has paid off with a rapid start-up,” Saarela says. “Early in the engineering phase, we worked with Andritz to simplify our process.  For example, we have simplified chip feeding, the four-stage bleach plant makes it easy to correct for any variations, and the two drying lines help us balance the mill’s whitewater and steam flows much easier.”

Saarela explains that the production goal is to produce as stable a quality as possible.  “Unplanned production stops are the biggest enemy to pulp quality and the biggest potential for negative environmental impacts, so our target is to keep the mill running,” Saarela says.  “We are seeing very stable and uniform production from the Andritz technology.”

 Environmental monitoring

The Fray Bentos mill is based in all aspects on the best available technologies, e.g. for forestry, wood harvesting and transport, pulp production, pollution control, and environmental management.  The Best Available Techniques (BAT) from Andritz are impressive in terms of scale and efficiency.

According to Gervasio González“We cover the environmental aspects every day in our morning meeting as they have the highest priority.”
Gervasio González, Environmental Manager at Fray Bentos mill, Environmental Manager, the Fray Bentos mill has “some of the most strict permit levels in the world.”

“This mill functioned continuously without disturbances even during start-up,” González says.  “We have the best technology available and we have trained the people the best we can.  Anyone in the mill is empowered to stop the production process if they see an environmental situation.  We cover the environmental aspects every day in our morning meeting as they have the highest priority.”

Compared to the amount of pulp produced, the emissions from the Fray Bentos mill are among the least intrusive in the world. Air emissions of TRS (odorous compounds) and sulfur dioxide have been virtually eliminated with the advanced chemical recovery technologies.  Modified cooking and efficient pulp washing lower the effluent load from the fiberlineThe 3200 admt/d bleached fiberline at Fray Bentos features a two-vessel Downflow Lo-Solids® digester with TurboFeed® chip feeding (shown to the right of the fiberline and in the photo below).  Nine large Drum Displacer® (DD) washers perform brownstock washing, screening/post-oxygen washing, and bleaching.  The bleach plant features the patented A-Stage™ for the first stage of the ECF bleaching process. The DD washers recycle bleaching filtrates to reduce the volume of effluent that must be processed in the water treatment facility., Oxygen delignification and A-Stage bleaching decrease the amount of chemicals required.  

As a result of using raw materials efficiently, there is very little solid residue left to discard to the landfill. In fact, less than 1% of the initial raw material is discarded.

Since the collection and treatment of odorous gases are a major factor in forming the local community’s opinion about having a pulp mill as a neighbor, designed into the plant are alternative ways to burn these gases.  Electricity is also generated in an environmentally friendly way at the Fray Bentos mill.  Botnia’s electricity generation adheres to the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) which is determined in the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

 Long-term support

“A lot of work is involved in planning the maintenance of a new pulp mill, such as Fray Bentos,” says Lars Klang“A project this size requires extensive maintenance planning.  We are well prepared.”
Aulis Katajamäki, Project Manager for Maintenance from Andritz (left) and Lars Klang, Vice President of Mill Services for Botnia.  , Vice President of Mill Services and Logistics for Botnia.  “The reason we chose to outsource our maintenance is that it is easier to focus people’s attention when it is a well-defined organization.”

“We can see the results already from choosing Andritz to perform our maintenance activities,” Klang says.  “We are well prepared.”

Aulis Katajamäki is the Andritz manager on-site responsible for maintenance.  In explaining Andritz’s interest in providing total maintenance services, Katajamäki says, “Customers used to call us when they had problems.  Now we want them to call us before problems occur.”  

“We are here to prevent problems,” Katajamäki continues.  “Even though we act as part of the Botnia team, we are also Botnia’s portal into Andritz´s technical support.  We also give feedback about equipment performance to the product designers, based on our day-to-day experience.  We are not just a corrective service organization.”

Pasi Sahlman, a member of the maintenance team’s Reliability Group, explains the depth of pre-engineering and planning for Fray Bentos that occurred even before the mill started up.  “We have over 400 categories of equipment defined in our preventive maintenance (PM) system,” Sahlman says.  “We determined how important each piece of equipment was to the process, the time required to repair, cost to repair, etc.  From this, we developed a preventive and predictive maintenance plan and entered it into Botnia’s SAP PM computer system.”

The maintenance target for Fray Bentos is to have better productivity (in terms of maintenance cost per tonne of pulp produced) than it has today in Finland.

Today, 95% of the maintenance staffFranco Aguilar, an Analyzing Specialist for Instrumentation (left) and Ari Markkanen, Superintendent of Automation Maintenance for Andritz Uruguay. is from Uruguay, and Andritz’s goal is to make it 100% Uruguayan. Since Uruguay does not have a tradition of pulp production as Nordic countries do, this required Andritz to recruit locally and train extensively.  “The key people for our maintenance group were hired here in Uruguay two years ago and trained extensively in Finland,” Katajamäki says.  Local companies have been hired as subcontractors for auxiliary maintenance services (HVAC, cleaning, etc.).    

By adding the ability to produce pulp and paper to the established ability to export solid wood materials, Andritz’s technology and maintenance expertise enables Botnia to help Uruguay develop a new industry and provide significant positive socioeconomic impact in the entire region.  

 Andritz Technologies at Fray Bentos

Woodyard

Two-line chipping systemThe Andritz woodyard features a two-line chipping plant, chip storage, and chip screening system. Chip quality is maintained in two circular chip storage systems utilizing the latest blending technology for the FRB Euca pulp production from eucalyptus grandis and eucalyptus dunnii., chip storage, chip screening, and conveying system to provide high-quality eucalyptus chips to the fiberline. Chipping capacity is 330 m³/hr.

Pulp Production

Two-vessel Downflow Lo-Solids^® continuous digester (design capacity 3200 admt/d unbleached) with patented TurboFeed^® chip feeding system produces high-yield, high-quality pulp.  DD washers clean the pulp before and after two-stage oxygen delignification. Combined knot separation and screening system cleans the pulp prior to bleaching.  

Pulp Bleaching

Four-stage light ECF bleaching with patented A-Stage™ to reduce the amount of bleaching chemicals required.  No elemental chlorine is used in the bleaching process.  Four efficient DD washers wash the pulp to final cleanliness and further reduce effluent volume due to filtrate recycling capabilities.

Dewatering / Drying / Baling

The drying plant consists of two parallel lines.  Each line has a five-stage screening system to ensure pulp cleanliness, followed by a twin wire formerFor added flexibility, Botnia selected two identical Andritz 1800 admt/d dewatering and drying lines.  Dewatering is performed using Andritz’s Twin Wire Former pulp machines, with trim widths of 5.3 meters. ,  pulp machine (5.3 m width) to dewater the pulp, followed by an
Andritz dryerNo other pulp company has a product range that includes euca pulp as well as strong reinforcement pulp.  The main markets for Botnia’s FRB Euca pulp are China and Europe.  Approximately 70% will be sold to Botnia’s owners (UPM-Kymmene and M-Real) and approximately 30% as market pulp. As part of the drying plant delivery, Andritz supplied two Andritz dryers, two Cutter/Layboys and four automated baling lines., followed by a Cutter/Layboy.  There are four automated baling lines to weigh, press, wrap, stencil, and tie the dried pulp bales.

Chemical Recovery and Energy Production

The evaporation plant (1100 t/h) consists of seven effects of lamella-type evaporators, with internal stripping of volatile gases and the ability to segregate condensate streams.  The recovery boiler

Andritz supplied the entire chemical recovery island. The evaporation capacity is 1100 t/h. The recovery boiler is among the world’s largest – burning up to 4450 tds/d.

is among the world’s largest at 4450 tds/d.  The white liquor plant boilerThe Andritz white liquor plant produces 10,000 m3 of white liquor per day for the fiberline. The kiln – at 135 m long – can produce 830 t/d of lime. The primary fuel is heavy oil, although odorous gases collected from the pulping process are also utilized. (10,000 m³/d) consists of advanced technology for the filtration of green and white liquors, and a lime reburning kiln (830 t/d).  A complete system for the collection of odorous gases and incineration in the recovery boiler (with backup alternatives in the auxiliary boilers) ensures low odor emissions from the mill. The steam from the recovery boiler is sufficient for the turbo generator to generate enough electricity to power the entire mill.  

Dynamic simulation

Dynamic Process Simulator from IDEAS to model all the mill’s pro-cesses for training operators prior to start-up.