Paper Sensor Passes Milestone.

The paper industry is one step closer to saving millions of dollars each year. An innovative laser ultrasonic sensor designed and built by scientists from the U.S. Department of Energys Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab; Website: http://www.lbl.gov) was recently successfully tested at a paper mill in Jackson, Alabama.

The sensor measures a paper's bending stiffness and shear strength two hallmarks of paper quality as it speeds through a production web. By doing so, it can ensure that the optimum amount of raw material is used to make the paper, which could reduce the consumption of trees and chemicals and save the U.S. approximately $200 million in energy costs and $330 million in fiber costs each year.

This is the first full-scale demonstration of the sensor on a commercial paper-making machine while its in operation, says Paul Ridgway of Berkeley Lab's Environmental Energy Technologies Division (EETD), who developed the sensor with the projects principal investigator and fellow EETD scientist Rick Russo, in partnership with the Institute of Paper Science and Technology at Georgia Tech. The two-week test was conducted in February at a mill owned by Boise Cascade. Boise Cascades engineers considered the trial to be quite successful, and are hopeful that a six-month trial will be conducted at the same mill, says Ridgway.

Papermaking is an obvious candidate for improvement. To gauge paper quality today, a 15 to 30-ton paper roll is manufactured, and then a few samples are obtained from the end of the roll and analyzed for their mechanical properties by observing how they bend. If ...