Gorham Paper Mill switched to Natural Gas

[peakbagger]

The Gorham Papermill up until last week used to burn #6 fuel oil. They have now switched to natural gas. The is a big plus for the local environment downstream of the stack, as #6 fuel oil is a relatively dirty fuel to burn having a lot of heavy metallic residuals. This is a big cost savings to the facility, reportedly 1 million per month which improves its competitiveness. It also gets a lot of tanker trucks off the road year round. They do have capabilities to switch back to oil in an natural gas curtailment, but if it happens, it would only be for a short time due to the substantial savings with natural gas.

A future project currently under construction will get rid of the North Countries "eternal flame" as soon as the pipe is fully run. http://alpha.smemaine.com/avrrdd/flarecam/ (only worth looking at this link after dark)

The landfill gas will be routed to the papermill to displace natural gas.

The local paper also announced that they are still pursuing a new tissue machine.

 

[RoySwkr]

What, they can't burn wood waste?

 

[peakbagger]

The plant is a papermill, they buy raw wood pulp from other suppliers and turn it into paper. Therefore they dont have a lot of woodwaste to burn. They do produce small amounts of "sludge" which is a mix of short fibers that are too small to make paper with, clays and fillers. This actually is used beneficially at the local landfill for intermediate capping. If the sludge is burned, the clays and fillers act like any other clay when fired and makes the equivalent of bricks on the boiler walls (not good).

 

[RoySwkr]

There still must be a lot of logging slash and other low grade stuff in the area

 

[erugs]

I hope good people in the region can get good jobs in a good environment and then find ways to enjoy the great outdoors in the mountains that mean so much to us when they have time off. It's about time.

 

[Lefty E]

True about the logging slash left on the jobs..guess they have to leave some messy stuff, so the beetles can invigorate the soil after eating the slash!! A lot of nice small or medium sized firewood goes bye bye too..