Case Study: Recycling Paper Mill Baghouse Dust Collector
Imperial Helps a Large Recycling Paper Mill become NFPA compliant while creating a safer work environment.
About the Company:
As a global leader in the forest products industry. The company owns and operates nearly 40 pulp and paper mills and wood product facilities in the United States, Canada, and South Korea.
The company makes and supplies leading publishers globally with top quality commercial printing paper and newsprint for magazines as well as direct mail, instruction manuals, maps, flyers, etc.
Not only does the company also produces 1.7 million metric tons of market pulp at seven different facilities in North America, they are also a major producer of lumber and other wood products for residential-construction and home-renovation markets.
This particular case takes place at one of the North American plants located in West Virginia.
Challenge:
The West Virginia located recycling paper mill is one of the largest in the USA. Production hours at the shop are virtually non-stop, running 24 hours a day and 365 days a year.
Though the wood dust is not toxic, the company was having trouble becoming NFPA compliant and the employees were dealing with plenty of extreme health, safety, and fire hazards including: airborne dust coming off the belt conveyers and constantly floating in the air, and up to 7 inches of dust collecting on the machines weekly – creating tremendous fire hazards.
The only safety measure to this point were employee dust masks.
“We were capturing 400-500 pounds of dust weekly, it was a huge problem,” says one plant manager.
The dust was getting bad enough that the employees were having respiratory infections as well as eye infections.
It was time to make a change.
Solution:
In January of 2014, while searching the internet for dust control solutions, the large recycling paper mill stumbled upon Imperial Systems, Inc. Because of Imperials’ great values as a family owned company, as well as being a true one source company, it was an easy decision for the recycling mill to go with Imperial.
“Imperial was a one-stop-shop and we really valued that when bidding out the job. Imperial took care of the entire process from the drawings, to the engineering, to the fabrication, and clear through installation. The communication between us and them was always thorough”, said plant manager G. Thomas.
The company purchased a Reverse-Air Baghouse Dust Collector and over half a million dollars in ductwork from Imperial Systems. The development and install process began at the end of January and the entire project was up and running by March of 2014.
According to plant manager G. Thomas, who supervised the entire project, the Imperial Systems’ installation team was not only extremely knowledgeable and efficient, but they were also extremely respectful, helpful, and easy to work with.
“The install crew was a pleasure to work with, the whole process was a pleasure actually. Imperial was very easy to work with, there was no lack of communication, and I know if I need something in the future, I can call-in and somebody from Imperial will be here as soon as possible.”
To this day, the West Virginia paper recycling mill has had no problems with their dust collector purchased form Imperial Systems. Since becoming NFPA compliant, the shop has been cleaned up tremendously. There is minimal to no wood dust in the shop creating a much healthier and fire resistant environment and operations are running at a much smoother pace.
About Imperial Systems:
Located just north of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the small town of Jackson Center, Imperial Systems is among the top dust collection equipment manufacturing businesses in North America. Our values are built on designing and installing custom industrial dust collection systems with the strongest, most durable, fabrication to meet our customer’s needs.
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