Pulp and paper operator Mondi Syktyvkar has commissioned a new crude tall oil (CTO) facility at its site in Russia, the company announced on 13 July.
The plant at the company’s Syktyvkar pulp and paper mill will produce around 40,000 tonnes/year of crude tall oil with a focus on supplying the petrochemical, road construction, paint and coating sectors.
“The CTO plant was built as part of the Horizon strategic investment programme aiming at eliminating bottlenecks in pulp and paper production processes, as well as responding to the mill’s increased production capacity,” Mondi Syktyvka managing director Klaus Peller said.
“Processing of by-products of the pulp production process has become one of the outcomes of the roadmap as the old plant could no longer manage growing pulp production volumes.”
New equipment will allow all sulphate soap generated as a by-product of the mill’s pulp production to be processed. The new CTO plant produces softwood and hardwood tall oil with the former used at the plant to mitigate pitch deposits at the digesters and the latter sold to external companies.
Tall oil has recently been intensively used for biodiesel fuel production primarily in Scandinavian countries.
The new equipment allows automation and online control of most of the production process leading to continuous tall oil production.
To maximise the CTO plant’s production potential, the company said additional equipment would be commissioned including a 600m³ sulphate soap storage tank, a dispatch unit with a new bridge to load oil into rail tank cars and tank trucks and an extra storage tank.
The project is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2020.
Mondi Syktyvkar is part of Mondi Uncoated Fine Paper, which in turn is part of global packaging and paper company Mondi Group, which is headquartered in Vienna, Austria.
