Advanced Analytics for Increasing Production at North American Pulp and Paper Mill

A North American pulp mill operation faced challenges, achieving only about 80 percent of its production capacity at acceptable level of pulp quality. The implementation of a new data analytics initiative resulted in development of soft models with a higher level of accuracy that was integrated into control strategy, particularly the advanced process control (APC) loops, across crucial unit operations in the mill. This played a crucial role in improving gaps in control logic and gaining operational trust in running the system in “auto” mode. Embedding the knowledge of the subject matter expert resulted in identification of desired operating ranges, encompassing set points and upper or lower tolerances for key process variables in the APC. Operation of the system under the controlled condition resulted in 15 percent increase in throughput.