In today’s competitive landscape, the pulp and paper industry is grappling with rising labor costs, safety concerns and a growing demand for efficiency and sustainability. These challenges not only impact the profitability and productivity of these sectors but also their commitment to environmental stewardship.
FMW Industries understands these challenges and has dedicated its expertise to developing advanced solutions. This article will introduce you to cutting-edge wastepaper and pulp bale handling solutions, designed to optimize operations while ensuring safety sustainability and reduce unexpected downtime.
Fully automated wastepaper bale handling solutions
As recycled fiber has become more and more important to the paper industry, the demand for wastepaper handling machinery and expertise has increased over the years. FMW installed the first wastepaper dewiring system in 1985.
Since then more than 100 plants worldwide have been equipped with FMW’s latest technology and machinery for this sector. The company engineers innovative pulper feeding systems including dewiring and wire cutting applications, a system for homogenization of materials and conveyors. Let’s have a closer look at the process.
The FMW-Wire Cutter/ Concut is used for opening the wires before feeding the hydro-pulper where the wires are processed together with the rejects, while the FMW-Extractor dewires the recovered paper bales.
After the dewiring process a bale breaker and a leveling wheel can be used to equalize the material flow (FMW EFT system) to guarantee a continuous material flow into a drum pulper or a hydro pulper. All machines are state-of-the-art and adhere to the highest quality standards, enabling the customers to enhance their throughput, yield and prevent unexpected downtime while increasing the safety of their employees.
Drum pulper feeding – EFT (Equalized-Flow Technology)
The FMW-Extractor is the core process machine for such a system. It is a fully automated dewiring machine that removes wires continuously from the wastepaper bales. The cutting device is situated on the bottom side of the bale, while the dewiring device is located on the top of the bale.
The conveyor is designed to continue operating during the dewiring process, which increases throughput capacity and ensures a continuous material flow. Another benefit of this application is that the entire process takes place within the conveyor, which eliminates paper spillage around the machine. The wastepaper bales are fed onto the apron conveyor in dedicated orientation.
Especially in handling wastepaper bales, mills are often faced with the issue of different positions of the wired bales, requiring meticulous attention from on-site staff to ensure the bales are fed correctly into the process. This manual handling not only poses process safety risks, but also impedes operational efficiency and consistency in product quality.
To face this challenge, FMW Industries engineered the so-called Bale Tipper, a comprehensive automated solution. It is designed to accept bales in their original state, irrespective of their wire configuration and position (horizontal or vertical). The system is programmed to detect the wires, rotate the bale if necessary and convey into the Extractor, the automated dewiring machine. After bales are dewired, the FMW Bale Breaker and leveling wheel are used to loosen the paper bales and get a constant material height to guarantee an equalized material flow into the drum pulper.
Hydro-pulper feeding
For the feeding of hydro-pulpers the wires do not need to be removed. Therefore automatic wire cutters have been developed to meet specific functional and operational requirements. Here are some key differences:
- FMW Concut focuses on continuous wire and steel/plastic strip cutting for various recycled paper bales, offering high through put capacity.
- FMW AD-Cutter is specialized for cutting wastepaper bale wires, available in different types for single bales (AD/I) and cross-wired configurations (AD/II). Or for high throughput (up to 2500 bdt/d) as a double bale application (AD/III).
- FMW Paper Reel Splitter is tailored for industrial cutting and portioning of materials, particularly wastepaper rolls.
Virgin pulp handling
Since 1991, FMW has been a highly regarded partner for leading tissue & papermakers globally in the field of virgin pulp handling. FMW’s pulp bale handling solutions are designed to fully automate this process, ensuring high efficiency, safety and preservation of material quality. FMW’s applications optimizes the entire process, including unit dewiring, destacking and singe bale dewiring and storing as well as conveyor systems.
The fully automated system has a maximum capacity of more than 200 bales per hour, handling pulp bales from the unit receiving stage to the pulper feed conveyor, where separated bales in different grades are stored. The bale tracking system allows for the composition of a variety of bale mixtures, resulting in increased yield and quality. One of the initial core machine in the process is the FMW Unit Dewiring (UD 8), which effectively removes all wires from the unit.
The cutting device is situated between the chain conveyor on the lower side of the unit, while the coiling drum is located on the upper side of the unit and is pressed by hydraulic onto the unit. Once the unit has been dewired, it will be transported via a chain conveyor to the FMW-Destacker, where the unit will be separated into single bales.
In 2022, FMW unveiled a new destacker, the first in its virgin pulp handling portfolio to operate without hydraulic power. This innovative machine is driven fully by electro-mechanics, marking a significant advancement in the industry. In the next step, the destacked and separated bales are dewired by a single bale dewiring machine, the FMW–Wire King. This fully automated machine cuts and dewires on two opposite sides of the bale. Based on the information from the bale tracking system, the machine control can decide whether the bale must be turned to dewire the other side in case of cross-wired bales.
In conclusion, FMW’s fully automated bale handling solutions represent today’s state-of-the-art technology, offering smart, modern solutions for material handling with a strong focus on safety, process stability and decreased downtime. With decades of experience and know-how, FMW guarantees proven solutions tailored to meet individual needs, from existing plant modifications to the development of new turnkey plants.
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