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BioRegional
MiniMills (UK) Ltd.
Agricultural residues such as
wheat straw are plentiful and can be used to make the paper we need.
In fact 8% of the world’s paper is made from non-wood fibres.
As agricultural residues are bulky they are best pulped on a small-scale
of around 10,000 – 30,000 tones per year - much smaller than
wood pulp mills.
To date the main problem with using these residues is that there
is no clean technology to treat the toxic effluent, known as black
liquor, produced at this small scale. Because of the pollution that
the effluent has caused, many small, straw paper mills in China
and India have been closed down, holding back the use of agricultural
residues to make paper there and in Europe.
BioRegional MiniMills (UK) Ltd was established in 1997 to develop
and apply small-scale, clean technology to pulp straw and recover
energy and pulping chemicals from the effluent – the MiniMill.
The technology could also be used for the mainstream wood pulp industry.The
MiniMill has been developed to the point where the technical and
economic feasibility is proven at a laboratory and pilot scale.
Currently a 10% industrial scale demonstration plant has been constructed
and is being tested at a paper mill in Manchester, UK.
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Read the MiniMills
feature in Pulp and Paper International
August 2008 download |
Last updated 24th April 2009
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