Effective odour control at a paper company

Year: 2022

Location: Canada

Application: Industrial Manufacturing

The client is located in a suburban area of a large city, surrounded by other industrial operations.

Multiple paper-converting processes are carried out in the production plant, which produces intense and overlapping odorous emissions. The city council has repeatedly and increasingly communicated the need for effective odour control to avoid the need to relocate the plant.

In addition, the client needs to optimize its current mitigation/remediation processes to reduce its costs in additives (Biofilters) and energy (Fogging Ramp).

Odour mitigation relies heavily on the ability to identify odour sources and differentiate them from nearby off-site sources. Given the complex topography and architecture of the site (nearby elevated railroad, highways, dense group of own and external channelled sources), real-time identification and quantification are key to any mitigation/ remediation endeavour.

Once the offending source is differentiated and identified, the plant operator can take immediate corrective actions.

The implementation of an Ellona WT1 Analyzers network, consisting of 3 Ellona WT1 units, each with:

• H2S sensors
• Mercaptans sensors
• Odour sensors based on Metal-Oxide (MOX) units
• Temperature, Pressure, RH

The integration of the data from the Ellona Intelligent Platform into the Plant’s dashboard and control panel was made available through the built-in API.

Since the customer location was exposed to multiple contributing sources, a preliminary study was conducted with the help of our local partner.

This helped to determine the optimal locations for the WT1’s based on in-situ observations, the data provided by an initially deployed unit, and prevailing winds directions.

Real time information about:

• Odour levels automatic identification
• Characterization of Perceived odours
• Identification of emitting sources
• Triggering of alerts and alarms for remediation purposes – notification thresholds were defined at 500, 750 and 1,000 Distance Odor Units (DOU)
• Odor-level data was collected for correlation analysis with operational activities (Biofilter additives and Fogging ramp). The optimal utilization of additives and the ramp was translated into chemical and energy savings