I'm the shift engineer at a Kraft Pulp Mill here in Tumut Australia for Visy Pulp and Paper. My job is to manage the operations and process of a Black Liquor CRF, a BFB bark boiler & turbine, a FFFF Evap set and a Recaust/Lime Kiln plant. I'm also a licenced BLRB operator/Turbine Operator/Advanced Boiler Operator (irrelevent Australian WorkCover qualification).

 

As there are only 2 BLRBs in Australia, with a handful of paper mills, you can appreciate my profession is pretty unique. The only time I ever get to meet other operators and engineers is through BLRBAC (which is not always condusive to open conversation).

 

Surely out of the several hundred Kraft Mills in the US and Canada, someone who works there is a Subaru owner who frequents this board! I'm very proud of what I do and very enthusiastic to chat about it.

OH!!!! You meant to say "Recovery Boiler", I was wondering what a bolier was.

My bad I'll fix it thanks.

I was once a Maintenance Electrician for a Salmon Cannery on Kodiak Is, Alaska. We used a Large boiler for the Autoclaves (3). It was my job (initiation) to clean the boiler tubes prior to the plant starting up. Now that was a fun job

I would assume that a recovery boiler would be a tank that holds blowby?

A Recovery Boiler, or Chemical Recovery Furnace (CRF) is a furnace used to reduce liquors rich in organics (such a Kraft Black Liquor, which is a caustic liquid used for cooking wood chips to make pulp) to their basic inorganic constituents by burning them.

 

Think an aqueous mixture NaSO4 + organics (methanols, oils, cellulose etc etc) returning as NaSO . . . which is used to produce other chemicals in the pulping process.

 

Ever driven past a pulp mill and gone "hot damn that stinks"? That's the Recovery Boiler . . . although ours doesn't stink!

yeah i know what it is hehe

kinda cool to sit in the control room and watch the monitors show the almost liquid firestorm in those things

 

i used to work for a company that did industrial leak repair so i got to see all sorts of places in paper mills and oil refinery's

i'v even been inside those nice big steel drums with the tiny openings in them

that they use to make the paper with.. talk about a wierd feeling

being in those things while they are still pretty dam hot even after sitting for a day and a half

staring at the steam nozzles pointed right at your chest while your sealing a leak inside of the drum hopeing that that tiny lock you put on the lockout board will keep you from being vaporized lol

 

kinda wierd hunched over inside there and looking out and your shoulders don't fit through the hole unles you go thru it like you where diving into a pool