A Water Quality Limited Approach
To Effluent Reduction in Paper Manufacture
ALLAN M. SPRINGER, Research Engineer
DUANE W. MARSHALL, Regional Engineer
National Council of the Paper Industry for
Air and Stream Improvement, Inc.
Kalamazoo, Michigan 49001
WILLIAM J. GILLESPIE, Regional Engineer
National Council of the Paper Industry for
Air and Stream Improvement, Inc.
Gainesville, Florida 32604
INTRODUCTION
With the emerging U.S. Environmental Protection Agency effluent guidelines being
formulated for the paper industry in terms of pounds of BOD and/or suspended solids per
ton of production, all possible alternatives to meet these guidelines should be evaluated. A
possible way to meet these guidelines or at least make progress toward meeting these
guidelines, is through internal process water reuse. Thus, the Council has developed a
research program aimed at developing useful information which would aid mills in
implementing water reuse. Each mill is a unique situation, and it would be best to handle the
problem on a mill-by-mill basis. However, this is impractical because of the large number of
mills in the continental United States. Thus, the next best alternative is development of
information which would be applicable to a given category of pulp and paper
manufacturing based on the type of product they produce. The categories the industry was
arbitrarily divided into are given in Table I. The nonintegrated mills will be investigated
first, and then the integrated. This paper is the first of a series and covers water reuse in
combination paperboard manufacturing.
TABLE I
CATEGORIES THAT MILLS WILL BE CLASSIFIED INTO FOR WHITE WATER
RECYCLING STUDY
PAPER   83% of Total Paper Production (1971 = 23 x 106 tons)
*1. Tissue — 16%
2. Unbleached Kraft Packaging and Converting — 16%
3. News Print — 14%
*4. Coated Printing and Writing — 14%
♦5. Uncoated Printing and Writing — 23%
PAPERBOARD   78.6% of Total Paperboard Production (1971 = 26 x 106 tons)
I. Unbleached Kraft Linerboard — 41%
*2. Combination Paperboard — 27.6%
3. Corregating Medium — 10%
♦Phase 1 of the program will be to study nonintegrated mills in these areas. Phase 2
will handle integrated mills.
The literature covering water reuse in combination paperboard operations is limited
but does contain some outstanding examples of water reuse practice (1,2,3,4,5) and some
overviews of what the industry has accomplished (6, 7).
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