Researchers at Aalto University introduce a novel approach for the heat integration of a thermo-mechanical pulp mill and paper machine using Energy Hub that consists of a steam generator heat pump and the electric boiler

July 31, 2023 (press release) –

2023 JUL 28 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Economics Daily Report -- Investigators discuss new findings in Investment. According to news reporting originating from Espoo, Finland , by NewsRx correspondents, research stated, “A large part of the refining heat production in the thermomechanical pulp mill can be recovered to supply the paper machine heat demand. This study introduces a novel approach for the heat integration of a thermo-mechanical pulp mill and paper machine using Energy Hub.”

Financial support for this research came from Research Council of Finland .

Our news editors obtained a quote from the research from Aalto University , “An Energy Hub consisting of a steam generator heat pump and the electric boiler is integrated with the thermomechanical pulp mill to provide the heating demand of the paper machine. The advanced cost-efficient design and operation of the Energy Hub are investigated in this research by integrating thermo-economic analysis, reliability & availability assessment, and load profile pre-diction. The thermo-economic analysis combines economics and thermodynamics, which is necessary for energy system unit commitments. Reliability assessment will lead to more accurate modeling of real-life system oper-ating conditions since system components’ availability is considered in the design process. Load profile pre-diction estimates the Energy Hub load for the next hour, which helps with the optimal operation of the Energy Hub.Different state-of-the-art long-short-term memory (LSTM) neural network models have been developed to achieve the best time series model for refining heat prediction in the thermomechanical pulp mill. Results show that all the time series models are effective for refining heat prediction, while Bidirectional LSTM appears to perform better than others with the correlation coefficient and root mean square error of 0.9 and 0.15, respectively. In addition, the proposed Energy Hub design approach is compared with the conventional design method. The proposed design method offers a robust design that isn’t impacted by unsupplied demand penalty rates.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “Depending on the penalty rates, the total system cost could decrease by 14%-28% utilizing the proposed design method.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: Advanced Design and Operation of Energy Hub for Forest Industry Using Reliability Assessment. Applied Thermal Engineering, 2023;230. Applied Thermal Engineering can be contacted at: Pergamon-elsevier Science Ltd , The Boulevard, Langford Lane , Kidlington, Oxford OX5 1GB, England . ( Elsevier - www.elsevier.com; Applied Thermal Engineering - http://www.journals.elsevier.com/applied-thermal-engineering/)

The news editors report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Behnam Talebjedi, Aalto University , School of Engineering , Dept. of Mechanical Engineering , Espoo, Finland . Additional authors for this research include Timo Laukkanen , Henrik Holmberg and Sanna Syri .

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2023.120751. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

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