Dustin Olender

From Common Energy UVic

Eating a granola bar on the way to Love Lake, BC

My research involves the design of a force sensor for the pulp and paper industry. The force sensor replaces a small section of bar in a machine called a mechanical refiner (pictured below). In brief, you put wood chip into these refiners and you get pulp suitable for making paper out of them. The refiner force sensor (or RFS) is capable of measuring the individual impacts that crush the wood chip into pulp. RFS trials have taken place at mills in Canada and the US, and the recorded data continues to shed light on a process that is not very well understood. It is hoped this information will be used to make improvements in efficiency. Even small improvements in operation could be very significant, as refiners can consume anywhere from 100 kW to over 20 MW. Tens of thousands of these machines exist worldwide, and run continuously everyday.

Cleaning out an Andritz 45-1B mechanical refiner

Keywords: Energy efficiency, process improvement, sensors