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$1M to Cut Norske Mill Stink |
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Cowichan Valley Citizen
By Lexi Bainas, Citizen Staff
July 27, 2005
NorskeCanada is planning a million dollars worth of work this Fall to
further reduce the characteristic rotten-egg smell emanating from its
Crofton pulp and paper mill.
"Basically what we're doing is a continuation of our odour-reduction
program that we've been doing over the last several years," said
NorskeCanada environment manager Michelle Vessey. "We'll be
collecting another one of our sources. It's about 30 per cent
emissions from the site."
Vessey said the process "is like a big vacuum cleaner, really. We've
got a large piping system in place with a fan and we draw from a number
of our tanks and processes. We've been drawing that odourous gas and
we burn it in the boiler. What we're doing is adding another source to
that collection system."
In 2001 the company pulled off about 70 per cent of its emissions at a
cost of $12 million, she said. "So now we're just adding more sources
to that system that's already in place. We finished the project in
2002 and this is our next strategy."
The next source to be removed is 'total reduced sulphur' (TRS). It's
coming from one of our digester chip bins, where the chips actually go
into the digesting process," Vessey said. "There's a lot of heat there
so it gives off TRS odour. It's that sulphur gas, it's that smell you
smell when you go near a kraft mill."
The TRS will be destroyed and the sulphur recovered for future use.
Vessey had hoped to present the odour-reduction plan to the June
meeting of the Crofton Community Advisory Forum but couldn't because
the forum got bogged down in other matters.
Norske is also improving its scrubbing system so it catches emissions even if the kiln is shut down.
"We think we're going to see our biggest impact in reductions closer to
the mill in Crofton as opposed to, say, Maple Bay," Vessey said, "but
we've got all our ambient stations in place so we'll be really
interested to see the results after we've collected this source."
The work will likely start around the end of September, and should be
finished in October, Vessey said. "We've done what we can to tie these
lines but we have to have a (regular maintenance) shutdown."
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