Successful application of process control and on-line pulp quality sensors - a survey

The Process Control Committee has compiled the results of two surveys; one on industrial process control applications and one on the use of on-line pulp quality sensors. Over 20 mills across Canada answered the surveys. For each control application, the objective, the total cost, the technology used and the benefits were identified. The results illustrate the potential of process control to provide substantially high savings as compared to the relatively small implementation costs. Sensor reliability was often cited as a major factor in the success of the control applications. For each sensor application in the survey, the use in control and a measure of reliability was ascertained. Few of the mills replying to the survey use pulp quality sensors in automatic feedback and those mills reporting sensor reliability problems performed little regular maintenance or calibration.