Condition-based wood chipper monitoring boosts productivity at Aspa Pulp

Knife sharpness monitoring in a process-critical wood chipper enabled condition-based maintenance and improved chip quality at Aspa Pulp, a Swedish producer of bleached and unbleached softwood pulp. The result was higher digester efficiency and improved Overall Equipment Efficiency.

Application and monitoring setup

SPM Instrument’s wood chipper process optimization solution monitors the sharpness of individual knives and detects knife damage caused by foreign objects entering the chipper. Overall knife sharpness is monitored to enable condition-based knife replacement. Intellinova online systems are also used to monitor dryer machine main rolls using patented HD Technologies.

Results and benefits

More uniform wood chips allow the digester to run more efficiently, resulting in a significant performance increase and an estimated digester throughput improvement of around 10 percent. Condition-based maintenance and process optimization support better planning in a 24/7 production environment, optimized raw material yield, reduced costs, and more stable operations.