Integrated pulp and paper mill planning and scheduling

This article describes a real-world production planning and scheduling problem occurring at an integrated pulp and paper mill (P&P) which manufactures paper for cardboard out of produced pulp. During the cooking of wood chips in the digester, two by-products are produced: the pulp itself (virgin fibers) and the waste stream known as black liquor. The former is then mixed with recycled fibers and processed in a paper machine. Here, due to significant sequence-dependent setups in paper type changeovers, sizing and sequencing of lots have to be made simultaneously in order to efficiently use capacity. The latter is converted into electrical energy using a set of evaporators, recovery boilers and counter-pressure turbines. The planning challenge is then to synchronize the material flow as it moves through the pulp and paper mills, and energy plant, maximizing customer demand (as backlogging is allowed), and minimizing operation costs. Due to the intensive capital feature of P&P, the output of the digester must be maximized. As the production bottleneck is not fixed, to tackle this problem we propose a new model that integrates the critical production units associated to the pulp and paper mills, and energy plant for the first time. Simple stochastic mixed integer programming based local search heuristics are developed to obtain good feasible solutions for the problem. The benefits of integrating the three stages are discussed. The proposed approaches are tested on real-world data. Our work may help P&P companies to increase their competitiveness and reactiveness in dealing with demand pattern oscillations. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Paper-based diffusive gradients in thin films technique coupled to energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometry for the determination of labile Mn, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn and Pb in river water

The diffusive gradients in thin films (DGT) technique has shown enormous potential for labile metal monitoring in fresh water due to the preconcentration, time-integrated, matrix interference removal and speciation analytical features. In this work, the coupling of energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence (EDXRF) with paper-based DGT devices was evaluated for the direct determination of Mn, Co. Ni, Cu, Zn and Pb in fresh water. The DGT samplers were assembled with cellulose (Whatman 3 MM chromatography paper) as the diffusion layer and a cellulose phosphate ion exchange membrane (Whatman P 81 paper) as the binding agent. The diffusion coefficients of the analytes on 3 MM chromatography paper were calculated by deploying the DGT samplers in synthetic solutions containing 500 mu g L-1 of Mn. Co, Ni, Cu, Zn and Pb (4 L at pH 5.5 and ionic strength at 0.05 mol L-1). After retrieval, the DGT units were disassembled and the P81 papers were dried and analysed by EDXRF directly. The 3 MM chromatographic paper diffusion coefficients of the analytes ranged from 1.67 to 1.87 x 10(-6) cm(2) s(-1). The metal retention and phosphate group homogeneities on the P81 membrane was studied by a spot analysis with a diameter of 1 mm. The proposed approach (DGT-EDXRF coupling) was applied to determine the analytes at five sampling sites (48 h in situ deployment) on the Piracicaba river basin, and the results (labile fraction) were compared with 0.45 mu m dissolved fractions determined by synchrotron radiation-excited total reflection X-ray fluorescence (SR-TXRF). The limits of detection of DGT-EDXRF coupling for the analytes (from 7.5 to 26 mu g L-1) were similar to those obtained by the sensitive SR-TXRF technique (3.8 to 9.1 mu g L-1). (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

An integrated approach of software development and test processes to distributed teams

The Distributed Software Development (DSD) is a development strategy that meets the globalization needs concerned with the increase productivity and cost reduction. However, the temporal distance, geographical dispersion and the socio-cultural differences, increased some challenges and, especially, added new requirements related with the communication, coordination and control of projects. Among these new demands there is the necessity of a software process that provides adequate support to the distributed software development. This paper presents an integrated approach of software development and test that considers distributed teams peculiarities. The approach purpose is to offer support to DSD, providing a better project visibility, improving the communication between the development and test teams, minimizing the ambiguity and difficulty to understand the artifacts and activities. This integrated approach was conceived based on four pillars: (i) to identify the DSD peculiarities concerned with development and test processes, (ii) to define the necessary elements to compose the integrated approach of development and test to support the distributed teams, (iii) to describe and specify the workflows, artifacts, and roles of the approach, and (iv) to represent appropriately the approach to enable the effective communication and understanding of it.

Advanced oxidation process H2O2/UV combined with anaerobic digestion to remove chlorinated organics from bleached kraft pulp mill wastewater

This study investigated the application of an advanced oxidation process combining hydrogen peroxide with ultraviolet radiation (H2O2/UV) to remove recalcitrant compounds from Kraft bleaching effluent. Anaerobic pre-treatment was performed to remove easily degraded organics using a horizontal-flow anaerobic immobilized biomass (HAIB) reactor. Bleaching plant effluent was treated in the HAIB reactor processed over 19 h of hydraulic retention time (HRT), reaching the expected removal efficiencies for COD (61 +/- 3%), TOC (69 +/- 9%), BOD5 (90 +/- 5%) and AOX (55 +/- 14%). However, the anaerobic treatment did not achieve acceptable removal of UV254 compounds. Furthermore, there was an increase of lignin, measured as total phenols. The H2O2/UV post-treatment provided a wide range of removal efficiencies depending on the dosage of hydrogen peroxide and UV irradiation: COD ranged from 0 to 11%, UV254 from 16 to 35%, lignin from 0 to 29% and AOX from 23 to 54%. All peroxide dosages applied in this work promoted an increase in the BOD5/COD ratio of the wastewater. The experiments demonstrate the technical feasibility of using H2O2/UV for post-treatment of bleaching effluents submitted to anaerobic pre-treatment.

An integrated approach to evaluate emerging contaminants in drinking water

The chemical stock of emerging contaminants in Brazilian drinking water is of great interest due to the poor water quality at surface water intakes. In addition, little is known about the effect of some contaminants, such as endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), which may be present in both raw and treated water. The aim of this work was to evaluate selected emerging contaminants in Brazilian waters using both chemical and biological analyses. Sampling sites were established in different municipalities based upon raw water quality data. Estrone, 17 beta-estradiol, estriol, 17 alpha-ethinylestradiol, bisphenol A, 4-n-octylphenol and 4-n-nonylphenol were determined in the samples by liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. A yeast assay using a Saccharomyces cerevisiae bioluminescent bioreporter was used to evaluate the estrogenic activity of the water samples. The first integrated results revealed similarities between the two individual approaches, since higher values for the bioassay were accompanied by significant concentrations of some selected compounds in surface water samples. No estrogenicity was observed for drinking water samples. Our results also indicate that the usual paradigm of evaluating water quality by measuring selected EDCs in a given water sample via chemical analysis, needs to be reviewed since the observed estrogenicity of a water sample is now a better guiding parameter to the selection of samples and substances to be chemically investigated in further analysis. So far, the data bank produced in this work, i.e., the comparison between chemical burden and observed estrogenicity, is not yet sufficiently robust to fully guide this decision. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.