ANDRITZ to Supply the World’s First Sulfuric Acid Plant in a Pulp Mill
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ANDRITZ has received an order to supply a sulfuric acid plant for Klabin’s Ortigueira mill in Brazil. The plant will be the first of its kind worldwide and is designed to produce 150 tons of commercial-grade (>98%) sulfuric acid per day from concentrated odorous gases and elemental sulfur. It will serve Klabin’s Puma I and Puma II pulp lines at Ortigueira once completed and make Klabin’s Ortigueira site completely self-sufficient in sulfuric acid.
ANDRITZ will supply technologies on EPCC basis for elemental sulfur handling, sulfur and Concentrated Non-Condensable Gases (CNCG) combustion to form sulfur dioxide (SO2), sulfur dioxide conversion into concentrated (98% by wt.) sulfuric acid, and a flue gas handling system. The sulfuric acid plant uses wet-gas sulfuric acid (WSA) technology developed by Haldor Topsoe. The WSA technology has been proven in more than 150 references in many industries.
Once the sulfuric acid plant has been started up, it will help Klabin to control the sodium and sulfur (Na/S) balance and the sulfidity of the mill. Also, the resource efficiency of the Ortigueira site will be improved because less sulfate needs to be discharged due to the optimized Na/S balance, there is less truck traffic to the mill due to the chemical savings, and there is also less hazardous truck traffic because sulfur is transported in solid form and not as an acid. The sulfuric acid plant meets very strict air emission limits and does not produce any waste streams.
The technology used for this plant is based on ANDRITZ’s self-developed A-Recovery+ concept that enables pulp mills to extract side streams from the pulping process and turn them into commercial-grade products/commodities. ANDRITZ recently completed successful start-up of the world’s first methanol purification plant based on the A-Recovery+ concept. A-Recovery+ now also offers solutions for the treatment of odorous gases in the pulp and paper industry as well as for production of sulfuric acid from these gases.
