Manufacturing paper products requires vast quantities of water to produce cellulose pulp from trees. Once the water exits the process,it must be purified for reuse — conventionally, this wastewater is separated from contaminants using steam-fed evaporators.
However, evaporation requires a great deal of energy, and with its enormous paper industry, the U.S. uses about 0.2 quads, i.e., a quadrillion BTUs of energy per year for pulp wastewater recycling. As the world’s second largest producer of paper and paperboard, U.S. paper mills house some of the world’s most energy-intensive chemical processes.
Globally, the pulp and paper industry is one of the top energy consumers in the industrial sector, accounting for about 6% of total industrial energy consumption.
To reduce this energy load, chemical engineers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, with the support of the Rapid Advancement in Process Intensification Deployment (RAPID) Institute, have developed a novel graphene oxide (GO) membrane that efficiently recycles wastewater from the pulp and paper industry. This work is representative of RAPID’s ongoing mission to boost productivity and energy efficiency in manufacturing processes, chiefly by...
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