Rauma pulp mill adopts Mill-Wide Optimization

Metsä Fibre, a part of Metsä Group, has a longstanding collaboration with Valmet, co-developing solutions for their operations, including the pulp mill in Rauma, Finland. The mill started in 1996 and today produces 650,000 tons of softwood pulp.

"The Rauma team has always been open to new innovations, which made them an ideal go-to partner for our new Valmet Mill-Wide Optimization," says Mikko Tani, Corporate Account Manager at Valmet.

"Over the years our goals have remained focused on safety, availability, performance and environmental impact," notes Matti Toivonen, VP, Production Technology, Metsä Fibre. "But there are always challenges and bottlenecks. When one is solved, a new one arises in some other process area. We need to continuously improve production while achieving better sustainability."

Matti Toivonen, VP, Production Technology, Metsä Fibre and Markus Piipponen, Operations Manager, Metsä Fibre Rauma.

Data-driven planning and optimization

Valmet Mill-Wide Optimization (Valmet MWO) models the behavior and relationships between process areas. It gives teams new insights into how the mill can be optimized as a whole.

"Production planning at a pulp mill means typically that we are running the mill with high and steady production with highest quality and sustainability values," says Toivonen. "The starting point is that all pieces of wood are used efficiently. It’s a bit of a puzzle, so planning can be challenging."

We want to improve our production efficiency with digitalization and find more sustainable ways to operate our mills. Mill-wide optimization helps us in both, so it has a good strategic fit in our case.

"That’s why we saw potential in this new optimization solution, which fits well into our wider strategic program for sustainable industrial efficiency. We want to improve our production efficiency with digitalization and find more sustainable ways to operate our mills. Mill-wide optimization helps us in both, so it has a good strategic fit in our case," he continues. "While many planning aspects can be calculated manually, with complex processes, the automated algorithms save significant time."

Co-development for impactful change

The Rauma project kicked-off with a Mill-Wide Optimization Audit, an assessment of mill production potential using historical data with Valmet MWO. During the second phase, the solution was implemented at the Rauma site to verify the audit results and test the optimization modelling with real-time data from the mill.

"Based on the monitoring and evaluation period, we identified a set of improvements that would make the MWO solution more useful for the Rauma operation," says Matias Hultgren, Technical Manager, Mill-Wide Optimization at Valmet. "This was exactly the kind of co-development we hoped to see in the project, with an active and continuous dialogue between Valmet and the mill personnel. It ensures all parties benefit from the innovation."

This was exactly the kind of co-development we hoped to see in the project.

For mill engineers and operators who are used to working from dedicated control and monitoring displays of their process areas, the numerical trends and calculations of Valmet MWO needed to be visualized in a way the mill personnel can easily understand and trust.

"We arranged several workshops on this topic with all the mill stakeholders to ensure we got it right," says Lauri Kouvo, Senior Application Specialist at Valmet. "The visualizations needed to be familiar and support mill personnel reaching quick conclusions."

"We have all learned a lot during this project," agrees Markus Piipponen, Operations Manager, Metsä Fibre Rauma pulp mill. "The collaboration has been good and in a positive spirit."

Valmet Mill-Wide Optimization offers essential information that can be used in control rooms for planning breaks, speed changes and so forth.

Adaption and change

The third phase was left open and flexible to accommodate new development based on Rauma’s experiences and insights. "Another reason was to allow time for the mill operations team to prepare,” notes Kouvo. “With new innovations, change management is always key to success."

"Digitalization will increase and expand into new areas," says Toivonen. "Solutions like Valmet MWO produce information that can be utilized in many ways. They need to be integrated into our operations and support our targets, but we also need to be able to adjust our ways of working to make the best use of these solutions."

Valmet Mill-Wide Optimization is viewed in the morning meetings to get an up-to-date situation of the mill’s balance.

The changes required for mill-wide optimization crystallized for the Rauma team once commissioning was completed. "Valmet Mill-Wide Optimization is like a traffic sign that tells the speed limit," says Piipponen. "Valmet Mill-Wide Optimization is viewed in the morning meetings to get an up-to-date situation of the mill’s balance. We can see where in the mill we need to drive slower or faster. A tool like this really helps build communication practices and strong collaboration."

In Metsä Fibre Rauma pulp mill, Valmet Mill-Wide Optimization is viewed in the morning meetings to get an up-to-date situation of the mill’s balance.

For example, when planning an evaporation unit wash, the team can easily check the target levels of tanks from the Valmet MWO display. This fact-based information supports the mill team’s decision making and helps eliminate uncertainty.

Valmet Mill-Wide Optimization enables better coordination between the fiberline and recovery line. Now when the Rauma mill plans changes in the cooking production rate, for example, there is shared understanding of what the recovery line needs to do in advance – precisely, with no uncertainties of over or under correcting – to accommodate the new rate.

High expectations looking ahead

"After some fine-tuning during final commissioning, we can now fully utilize the tool," says Piipponen. "We get essential information that we can use in control rooms for planning breaks, speed changes and so forth. For example, it has helped us to plan the washes in the evaporation plant and to identify highest production rate in cooking."

This is just the first step. Together with Valmet, the Rauma team wants to build more capabilities on top of the planning optimization. There are lot of ideas and opportunities, like adding energy consumption and other balances to the main display.

"There are many equations to optimize," says Toivonen. "For example, we might discover that slowing the production just a little makes sense in the mill-wide picture because it would save tremendous amounts of water."

The Rauma team wants to further integrate Valmet Mill-Wide Optimization into daily operations so that it really becomes the common, natural base for decision making. For Metsä Fibre and Valmet, mill-wide optimization is about continuous collaboration and development.

Text: Randel Wells