Borregaard Taps GEA to Supply Turnkey Spray Drying Plant

Norwegian wood-based chemicals manufacturer Borregaard recently finalized plans to purchase a new turkey lignosulfonate spray drying plant from equipment supplier GEA, according to an announcement issued by GEA on Thursday.

As part of the process solution, the equipment maker will also supply Borregaard with a new silo for feeding powder into a packaging system in the facility and a wet scrubber for dust removal. The new plant and equipment will be installed at Borregarrd’s facility in Sarpsborg, Norway and the company plans to commission the new assets by mid-2019. 

“Our plant in Sarpsborg has an annual capacity of 160,000 tn of lignin, an increasing proportion of which are special products. We will optimize our production with the new GEA equipment,” said Borregaard senior purchaser Ståle Schie-Veslum in the GEA release. “The new infrastructure and energy facilities will reduce energy costs and offer significant environmental and safety benefits.”

Upon completion of the project, the Sarpsborg plant will produce lignin, an organic polymer used in concrete admixtures, fertilizers, industrial binders, oil field chemicals, and a range of other applications. 

The new plant supplied by GEA will be capable of feeding 25 tn/hr of lignosulfonates into a rotary atomizer and then spray dried. Cyclones are then used to separate the product into two groups. 

GEA’s scrubber technology will allow Borregarrd to reuse some wastewater. The scrubber uses water to filter dust and exhaust gasses from the spray dryer and then condensates the waste water in a falling film evaporator. Once valuable substances are recovered from the water, it is sent back to the spray drier to be used as process water. 

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