Tembec Temiscaming integrated biorefinery - Rinascite

T147
biorefining
L. MAGDZINSKI
Performance Development
Associates
4247 Esplanade,
Montreal, QC
H2W 1T1
Tembec Temiscaming
integrated biorefinery
By L. Magdzinski
44 • 107:6 (2006) • PULP & PAPER CANADA
Abstract: Guided by its internal programs Forever Green and Impact Zero, Tembec integrates
FSC certified forestry feedstock into bioenergy, biomaterials, and bioproducts in an economically
disciplined manner. Residues from lumber operations feed the production of specialty
cellulose pulp. Using chemical and biological transformations, the associated waste streams are processed
to produce modified lignin, ethanol, and anaerobic biogas, adding value to the main lumber
and pulp products. A working example is presented of value-driven and innovative bioprocessing
on an industrial scale at the Temiscaming complex.
T
EMBEC WAS CREATED in 1973 in Temiscaming,
QC, when a determined community,
entrepreneurs, and 350
unionized employees purchased a
shut down sulfite pulp mill that was
considered to be unprofitable. In the quest for
survival and profitability and through the innovative
skills of its personnel, the Temiscaming site
exploited the synergy of integrated biomass and
by-product utilization to expand to six major businesses
incorporating two major bioenergy plants.
Tembec has grown to be one of the top 100 Canadian
companies with over 9,000 employees and
over 50 manufacturing units in North and South
America and in Europe.
Sustainable forest biomass is Tembec’s cornerstone
resource. With two corporate sustainable
management programs, FOREVER GREEN for
forestry operations and IMPACT ZERO for
manufacturing, Tembec is a global leader in forest
supply-chain management of environmentally and
socially responsible forestry practices. Tembec has
signed a historic partnership agreement with the
World Wildlife Fund. In 2003, with the planting of
250 million trees, the company received Forest
Stewardship Council (FSC) certification for the
Gordon Cosens Forest, the most extensive FSCcertified
forest in Canada and one of the largest in
the world. Tembec has now achieved FSC certification
for 13 million acres of forestland in Canada.
The range of FSC-certified products offered by
the company is continually increasing and now
includes lumber, hardwood flooring, newsprint,
paperboard, specialty cellulose pulp, Northern
bleached softwood kraft pulp, high yield pulp, lignosulfonate,
and ethanol.
Trees are one of our most valuable resources,
with lumber as the principal product. Sustainable
tree harvesting ensures minimum soil and water
disturbance while guaranteeing that enough
nutrients and seeds remain to replenish the forest
ecosystem. Harvesting and transportation costs
are incorporated into the cost of any biomass as
indicated in Table I. Minimizing waste while using
forest resources to their full economic potential,
trimmings, low-grade wood, and even branches
supply the pulp and paper, OSB and particleboard
industries. Other residual process materials such
as pulping liquor and bark are further used as fuel
for process heat and electrical energy.
Forest-based companies have traditionally
manufactured other products from by-products
of the lumber and pulping processes. As an
example of an integrated biorefinery, the old
Howard Smith Paper Mills plant in Cornwall, ON
developed a process to isolate vanillin [1] and
then to manufacture ethanol from spent sulfite
liquor [2]. Integration continued by using pulp
and oxidized lignin [3] in diverse products such
as phenolic resins and in manufacture of products
[4] such as Arborite and roofing tiles at
the now-closed Cornwall pulp mill. Under Domtar,
when the Cornwall pulp mill changed to the
kraft pulping process, kraft lignin (Tomlinite)
and vanillin production processes [5] were introduced.
Until the availability of lower-cost phenol
from the petroleum in the 1950s, the wood pulping
industry was the largest supplier of vanillin in
the world.
Another example of an integrated forest-based
biorefinery is MeadWestvaco’s North Charleston
kraft mill complex [6]. Recovered tall oil soap is
refined into rosin and fatty acids. Fatty acids are
used in paints, corrosion inhibitors and other
industrial applications. Rosin is used to make
paper size for moisture-resistant paperboard. It is
also used to make tackifying resins for inks and
adhesives and in the production of synthetic rubber.
The Charleston facility also makes high valueadded
products from the lignin isolated for the
kraft black liquor. Kraft lignin, a natural polymer
that binds the fibres together in wood, is the basis
for many specialty chemical products used in dyeing
textile fibres, dispersing pesticides and emulsifying
asphalt.
It should not be forgotten that the primary products
of a sustainable forest are wood-based lumber
and construction materials, followed by pulp and
paper. Relative commercial values of products based
on one dry ton of wood are presented in Table II for
comparison. The use of valuable wood resources for
fuel or as a source of other products such as ethanol
is generally not economically feasible. In processes
requiring dry biomass, drying costs can quickly overcome
any economic value represented by wood or
forest-based residues.

TABLE I. Dry wood and biomass as feedstock cost
Biomass Cost (CAN$)
1 .
Approx. biomass energy content: 18GJ/T Drying Cost: 19GJ/T water removed
Whole wood for lumber (bone dry basis) $ >150/T
Homogeneous biomass
Forest pulpwood, agriculture crops $80-160/T
Forest / agricultural residues
(bark, sawdust, straw, corn stover) $40-90/T
Process residues (wood pulping liquor, lignin, sludge) $0-60/T
Heterogeneous biomass
Industrial or municipal sludge (heterogeneous) $(–30)-0/T
Urban biomass $(–30)-0/T
TABLE II. Approximate commercial value (Can$) / T dry wood (operational and
capital costs not deducted).
Lumber & Sulfite pulp Kraft pulp & Only fuel Energy oil
wood chips & energy energy ethanol equiv.
$500 $400 $350 $160-220 $160
TABLE III. Components of Kraft and sulfite cooking liquors (Rydholm, 1965) 1 .
Kraft black liquor (20% solids) Sulfite spent liquor (15% solids)
Component Solids % Component Solids %
Kraft Lignin 40 Lignosulfonate (with sulfur) 55
Extractives 4 Extractives 3
Hydroxy acids 28 Oligosaccharides 6
Acetic Acid 5 Monosaccharides 25
Formic Acid 3 Galactose [3]
Methanol 2 Glucose [3]
Sulfur 3 Mannose [11]
Sodium 15 Arabinose [1]
Xylose [5]
Sugar acids 5
Sugar sulfonates 3
Acetic Acid 2
Methanol 1
Total 100% Total 100%
i Rydholm, S.A. 1965. Pulping Processes. Interscience Publishing, New York.
TABLE IV. Anaerobic plant biogas
generation.
Water Flow m 3 /d 16,000
COD: IN kg/d 183,600
COD removed 65%
Gas Production: as CH4 Nm 3 /d 39,382
Gas Production: as biogas Nm 3 /d 58,779
Gas [CH4] % 67%
Gas [H 2 S] % 1,5 - 2,0%
The long history of the innovative use
of bioprocesses and by-product manufacture
at the Temiscaming complex sets the
stage for ongoing R&D activity into other
wood-derived products. Many different
components are available in kraft and sulfite
cooking liquors shown in Table III.
In Temiscaming, the sulfite pulping
process produces high purity cellulose.
Tembec’s Specialty Cellulose is used as a
feedstock in, among others, dairy products,
food thickeners, pharmaceuticals,
explosives, coatings, artificial sponges,
photographic films, laptop screens, textiles,
and pet food. Tembec Cellutions
produces over 400,000 tons of Specialty
Cellulose pulp annually.
During the sulfite pulping process,
the lignin molecule is broken down into
smaller segments and dissolved in water
by sulfonation. Lignosulfonates are used
as binders in animal feed, limestone,
and fertilizer, as surfactants and dispersants
in textile dyes, cement concrete,
wax and asphalt emulsions, and also
transformed into carbon black. Tembec
produces and markets 80,000 metric
tons of ARBO, sodium, ammonium
and calcium lignosulfonate each year.
These modified natural polymers are
both non-toxic and non-hazardous, also
finding uses in boiler water treatment, in
fruit flotation and in sealing gaskets for
food containers. Wood hemicelluloses
are transformed in the sulfite pulping
process, allowing fermentation to
ethanol. Currently, Tembec produces 18
FIG. 1. Tembec Temiscaming, QC: Complex of six manufacturing
plants. FIG. 2. Biorefinery: bio-energy / bio-product.
biorefining T148
PULP & PAPER CANADA • 107:6 (2006) • 45

T149
biorefining
million litres of ethanol a year.
The Temiscaming site makes good use
of its mixed biomass waste by burning it in
a co-generation boiler, generating steam
and electricity, supplying the site with most
of its energy requirements. The boiler handles
over 400 tons per day of dry biomass
consisting of bark, wood waste, and sludge
from the environmental treatment plant.
The Temiscaming site also cleans some
of its wastewater streams by converting
high-concentration organic contaminants
in a new anaerobic digester. The new
anaerobic plant, partially funded by
TEAM, started operating in January 2006,
treating wastewater containing over 183
tons per day of dissolved organic materials.
As shown in Table IV, the anaerobic
plant is capable of producing enough
methane to replace a majority of the site’s
natural gas demand that includes pulp
drying. In addition, an innovative biological
scrubbing process of the anaerobic
biogas stream removes hydrogen sulfide
contamination by converting it into elemental
sulfur. The elemental sulfur can,
in turn, be converted into bisulfite that is
used in the pulping.
As long as it makes economic sense
and does not detract from the main value
businesses of lumber and pulp, Tembec
46 • 107:6 (2006) • PULP & PAPER CANADA
will consider other integrated processes in
the future.
Temiscaming has shown that downstream
integration of waste streams and byproducts
into non-traditional products
might be a value-adding proposition. The
site has also demonstrated that lateral integration
of site services and bioenergy is beneficial
to satellite paperboard, High Yield
Pulp, and PF resins production. Tembec
remains on the lookout for other potentially
profitable integrated synergies based on
wood, fibre, cellulose and their by-products
to establish new growth for the future.
REFERENCES
1. Hibbert, H. and Tomlinson, G.A. “Vanillin Manufacture”
Canadian Patent 374898, 1938.
2. Tomlinson, G.A. “Manufacture Of Ethyl Alcohol
From Sulphite Residual Liquor” Canadian Patent
450163, 1948.
3. Cambron, E.A. “Thermosetting Lignin Containing
Resin” Canadian Patent 630127, 1961.
4. Arborite Company History: http://
www.arborite.com/ en/company_presentation.asp
5. Marshall, H. B. And Vincent, D.L. “Production Of
Syringealdehyde And/Or Vanillin From Hardwood
Waste Pulping Liquors” Canadian Patent 1040216, 1978.
6. MeadWestvaco Corporation, “Sustainbility Report”
Stamford, Connecticut, 2002.
Résumé: Dans le cadre de ses programmes internes Verts Horizons MC et Impact Zéro MC , Tembec
intègre d’une manière économiquement disciplinée des matières premières forestières certifiées
FSC MC dans la bioénergie, les biomatériaux et les produits biologiques. Les résidus des activités
d’exploitation forestière alimentent la production de pâte de cellulose à usages spéciaux. À
l’aide de transformations chimiques et biologiques, les flux de déchets associés sont utilisés pour
produire de la lignine modifiée, de l’éthanol, et du biogaz anaérobie, ce qui ajoute de la valeur aux
principaux produits du bois d’oeuvre et de la pâte. Nous présentons un exemple pratique du biotraitement
novateur axé sur la valeur à l’échelle industrielle au complexe Temiscaming.
Reference: MAGDZINSKI, L. Tembec Temiscaming Integrated Biorefinery Pulp & Paper Canada
107(6): T147-149 (June, 2006).Paper presented at the 92nd Annual Meeting in Montreal, QC, February
6-10, 2006. Not to be reproduced without permission of PAPTAC. The manuscript was received on
January 16, 2006. Revised manuscript approved for publication by the Review Panel on March 22, 2006.
Keywords: CANADA, FOREST PRODUCTS INDUSTRY, POLLUTION CONTROL,
BIOMASS, BIOGAS.