I have started researching paper mills for a large vacant spot on my layout. One of the mills I have been looking at is the old Westvaco facility in North Charleston, SC. While looking at aerial photos, I noticed something odd (to me): inbound strings of woodchip hoppers being emptied via a rotary dumper right next to empty woodchip hoppers being loaded from the woodchip piles with a frontend loader. There were also several trucks loaded with woodchips being unloaded via hydraulic lift dumpers.
Why would this mill be receiving carloads (and truckloads) of woodchips while also sending out carloads of woodchips? They do not receive pulp wood to grind their own chips, so all of the oubound chips had to be delivered to the mill via truck or rail. The only possibility I have come up with is that the incoming truckloads of chips have been produced locally and are being sent out in the empty chip hoppers (loads in, loads out), but if that were the case, why would the mill need to receive chips via rail? Hmmmmmmm…
The papermills here only recieve wood chips. The chips arrive by truck, barge and rail at the papermills in Longview. Some mills only get chips by truck.
Papermills are located on the river bank as they require large amounts of water. The mill waste is then dumped in the river. The paper is shipped by rail and truck.
Not anymore. There is a huge multi-million dollar, decade long project starting up called the Fox River Clean Up Project. It’s sole purpose is to dig up a few feet from the bottom of the river to get out PCB contaminated river bed caused by the paper mills dumping their waste into the Fox River. No local paper mill has dumped waste into the Fox since 70’s IIRC, but it’s still a problem today. You can’t eat a fish caught in the river because of very high PCB levels, if you want to catch fish to eat you have to go a few miles up the bay. I think the project is slated to take 12 years to complete, but at the same time a major portion of the projected area lines in the shipping lanes of the Fox that see’s ship traffic as long as they can but typically from April to November IIRC. I know a few seasons ago they had to stop traffic in November, but opened ship traffic up again by the end of February. There is a lot to contest with, but they are also digging out tens of millions of cubic yards of contaminated river bed.
My best quest is that they are reselling the wood chips. I know from the research i did that some large papermills sell stuff to smaller mills. But i never heard of them reloading woodchip cars up and shiping them off.
I have been looking at some pics of the same paper mill plant. It looks like they are loading sawdust into hoppers. Could it be they are loading the"stuff" they can not use and selling it to a plywood processing plant(partical board). I know here at the paper mill about 25 miles outside of Wilmington, they recceive chips via trucks and rail cars. They also take in logs to be chipped. The paper plant in Riegelwood does not have a way to load out going hoppers. I also see trucks of logs going to a plywood plant about 2 miles away from the paper mill. The plywood plant has a rail siding, for loading the pylwood sheets onto flat cars.
Unless in some manner this particular mill is the first destination for chips which are then shipped on an as needed basis to affiliates or subsidiary mills, I wonder (meaning I don’t know) if they are transloading the chips into their own captive service hoppers to take into the mill (most mills use a conveyor for this) and sending the interchange cars back out onto the road?
Hi, having worked in both the paper and pulp industry I have the following information for you.
Woodchips are graded as they are being sent to the digesters, the reject woodchips are usually used as hog fuel by the industry (fuel for the boilers) or otherwise they would be burnt. Burning is no longer an option what with the new regulations regarding clean air.
I would suggest that if wood chips are being shipped then they are most likely being shipped to an industrial user that uses hog fuel. Also note that empty rail cars are on site, the railroad would be only too happy to be able to reuse the rail cars at the site.
I did some research and it turns out that Hog Fuel at some mills gets sold to power plants to be used as Bio fuel or turned into a gas that is like Natural Gas.
This link is to a pdf that talks about how a company uses hog fuel to supliment there use of natural gas. It saves them alot of money per year.
You are luck there. Here all the papermills dump the mill waste in the river or other waterway. We had a boat until three years ago and when going by a papermill the river changed from a dark green/blue colour to dark brown where the mill waste was dumped in. Looks like someone dumped a jillion gallons of coffee or CocaCola in there.