Moscow. May 29, 2008. /Lesprom.com/. By 2012 Sodra Cell Varo will probably be the world’s first pulp mill to be independent of fossil fuels for day-to-day operation. Thanks to an SEK 500 million ($83.3 million) investment package announced earlier this year, the Swedish mill will derive all its routine energy requirements from timber-based biofuel.

The landmark project, due to start up in 2010, includes a new evaporation plant (a key part of the pulp mill’s recovery process) and a bark dryer. The project will minimise the need for bark combustion in the process and enable surplus bark to be processed to a high-value biofuel while also cutting out the mill’s demand for heating oil in all but exceptional circumstances, such as a startup. For day-to-day operation, the mill’s bark boiler will be redundant.

Once up running, the new plant’s annual deliveries of surplus bark are expected to have an energy value equivalent to 200 GWh, the equivalent energy required to heat 10,000 homes. Total reduction of fossil carbon dioxide will be 75,000 tonnes per year.

Sodra Cell is the market pulp division of the Sodra Group and the largest market pulp producer in Europe.