Upgrading an existing treatment system to adopt cleaner production principals

Abstract

In 1981, SEKA Cellulose and Paper Co. started pulp and newsprint paper production in Balikesir, Turkey. Production technology that was initially TMP (Thermo Mechanical Pulping) was converted to CTMP (Chemical Thermo Mechanical Pulping) in 1986. Finally in 1990. another unit operation was added to the whole system and hydrogen peroxide bleaching was employed in production.The existing wastewater treatment plant that was built in 1981 was projected to treat wastewaters generated from TMP production line. As the technology changes mentioned above were proceeding no precaution in the flow scheme of the treatment plant was taken to accommodate the change in wastewater characteristics. As a result of increase in the values of various pollution parameters such as wastewater flow, influent BOD5, COD, SS etc., existing treatment plant has been failing to comply with receiving media (Simav River which was already BOD limited due to the other industrial and domestic discharges) discharge limits.Current Pollution loads to the treatment plant are higher than projected values and there are significant fluctuations in wastewater flow rate due to the sudden discharges from CTMP unit operations. In this study, two possible solutions to fix the current situation in terms of applying waste minimization strategy by using pollution prevention techniques in the plant and secondly modifying the existing treatment plant flow scheme are discussed.