I am looking to model a paper mill in HO. I have done a great deal of homework regarding paper mills, and I settled on a finishing mill that imports market pulp for sure and possibly recycled paper bales. When the right time “and home” comes around that will allow space to build, it will be roughly a 12’ x 12 x 2ish’ L layout with staging yards possible on either end.
The mill will be based along the Wisconsin River using Hydro-electric power and will be producing various grades of calendared and non calendared freesheet and groundwood both coated and non-coated for various printing and magazine companies. The mill will produce about 700-1000 tons per day. Currently the mill has 4 machines, 2 dedicated for freesheet and the other 2 for groundwood. To make things more fun, the company will be expanding and receiving materials on bulkhead gondolas, as the expansion is in the process of piping with various construction waste going out on gondola.
Now, this is where I can use some advice with how some of the needed commodities will be shipped in, and chime in if you see any other chemicals/coatings/binders are used in the non-pulping process. Here is what I have so far. Today, I picked up my 4th 3 pack of kaolin tank cars from athearn. That much is set. For sure I will be receiving loads of: corn starch - covered hopper, Caustic Soda - unknown, sodium Chlorite - no stainless steal lined hoppers in ho, Baled pulp - box car, baled recycled paper - box car, hydrogen peroxide “whitening” - tank car, and possibly titanium dioxide - covered hopper. As far as I know part of the deinking process of making recycled paper into fresh sheets would be cooking the paper, adding air and some type of soap/fatty acid for the ink to bind to. Any idea on how fatty acid/soap is shipped via rail?
Some things to consider–Paper is made by passing wood chips between two counter-rotating disks about five feet in diameter, they are infused with 60+/- GPM of water and steam @100 psi/400deg.F. The refiner disks are made up of plates that are bolted to the disks, and have channels cast in them. The type of paper being made will determine the distance the plates are from each other as they are running. Ours were powered by two 1650 HP. counter-rotating 440V 3 PH motors. Generally this is .005, flimsy paper .003, and magazine covers around .012. The mill I worked at had what was call the TMR Building, logs would come in by rail car, cut to length-they then went to a de-barker/gravel removal process, fed into an unbelieveably powerful chipper, and then blown into a pile on a large berm above the TMR building. At this point they were fed into the lines that went to the refiners.
After the slurrey was made it was pumped into the paper-making part of the mill.
The slurrey was discharged from a large pipe 12’ long that had overlaping spray nozzles, onto a belt that was porus where the slurrey had most of the water removed-(the screen was about 30’ long) As the now very thick slurrey came off the screen it passed over a long pipe full of holes that was pressurized with enough air to float the stock just long enough to be picked up by the first of a set of large drum rollers. The dryer “rack” was not quite 300 feet in length, and about 24’ wide. The rollers were stacked 8 high, were about 42" in diameter, and were so engineered that once the paper was picked up off the screen it was self fed all the way to the end where it passed between the King and Queen rolls to be pressed to what ever thickness specified for the run. The dryers were steam heated-100 psi. Paper is generally .0015 thick, and is made to a very close tolerance. The King and Queen rolls have a .025 crown machined into them, and under compression, this is removed, insuring the same thic
That is a very interesting post. I’m always curious about how things are made.
I had an opportunity quite a few years ago to tour the Emco shingle manufacturing plant in Brampton, Ontario. The sheer size of the machinery was amazing. The paper mill area seemed to go on forever.
What also amazed me was that there was very little waste coming out of the factory. They had their own water purification plant and the water from that went straight into the city’s water supply. The only thing of any volume (other than the shingles of course) that came out was bales of wire from the incoming waste paper products like telephone books that were used to make the shingle core. The asphalt ‘pellets’ came wrapped in a plastic that was designed to melt with the asphalt and disappear into the mix.
Of course there was a rather pungent smell of asphalt in the air around the plant!
I looked into Molten sulfur, but I did not find any reference of use in finishing, but it is used in the pulping process. With my mill, I will not be pulping the wood but purchasing market pulp and recycled paper.
If you have access to Google Maps; pull up Sylva, NC. There is a small paper plant along the now former NS Murphy branch. There is a small pulpwood facility on one side of the tracks (looks like it is served by trucks) and the plant itself is on the other side. Pulp goes into the main plant by an overhead conveyor. There is a long covered spur that had two NS box cars spotted when we were there in late August.
Caustic soda and fatty acid/soap are both shipped in tank cars. Some of the Walthers 16,000 gal. funnel flows are caustic soda cars, and Roundhouse used to make a tank decorated for a Green Bay company shipping fatty acid.
A photo of the Peace River paper mill on my layout. Box cars, covered hoppers, pulpwood and tank cars in, box cars of paper out. All the piping and other hard-to-model stuff (for me) is behind the flats.
Baled paper to be recycled can be brought to the mill in JB Hunt containers and trailers and about that paper mill in NC also google map the big Bowater plant near Rock Hill SC served by a NS branch and a CSX main line.
I am looking for some input on building a freight car roster. Motive power, I am set as I have 2 CN GP35-2, 1 CN GP40-2, mp15-ac former UP now GATX and looking to do the same to a GP-30. If you cannot tell, I’m a CN nut, and also enjoy leased power.
Over the past week or so I got some more details ironed out. I decided to receive 5 loads by rail, and the other misc chemicals not delivered by rail will be done so by truck. Here’s the list.
Sodium chlorate is the feedstock to make chlorine dioxide, which is used in the bleaching process. In the mills I’ve worked at (primarily in the southeast and northeast), sodium chlorate was received as a liquid in tank cars, not a solid in covered hoppers. The other option for a feedstock is pure chlorine in pressurized tank cars, but that is rapidly disappearing.
I decided not to use sodium chlorate. I am using some of the techniques of smaller mills that are FSC certified. Thats the reason for Hydrogen Peroxide. The goal of the mill is specalising on LWC paper for magazine printing.
