Date of Defense

4-21-2026

Date of Graduation

5-2026

Department

Chemical and Paper Engineering

First Advisor

James Springstead

Second Advisor

Mert Atilhan

Abstract

The objective of this project was to design a technically feasible and economically viable degassing system that decreased transition time between commodity and specialty coating for the K2 paper machine at Graphic Packaging International in Kalamazoo.

A market survey was conducted to evaluate the historical pricing trends of coated recycle linerboard, raw materials, the market for coated recycle linerboard, and Kalamazoo GPI’s production capacity. Economic performance was assessed using key-financial indicators over the mills current/future production. Economic performance was determined using annual revenue and expenses, fixed-capital income (FCI), payback period (PBP), return on investment (ROI), minimum acceptable rate of return (MAR), net present value (NPV), and internal rate of return (IRR).

The final design consists of an additional heat exchanger, feed tank, machine tank, two screw pumps, and piping/valves. These pieces of equipment were within the Team 2 scope of the project, Team 1 will be evaluating the degasser, vacuum pump, and separator. The economic analysis includes the costing and utilities of the equipment to evaluate the overall expenses and income. The K2 paper machine is assumed so be running at 1,400 ft/min but has the capacity to run at 2,100 ft/min. The coating is assumed to be flowing at 70 lb/min. When looking at the pieces of equipment researched, the feed tank, and other equipment, will mimic the design of the current K2 feed tanks that are 680 gallons with a jacket and agitator. The feed tank will be connected to a positive displacement screw pump that will require 1.62 kW of power to move the coating through 87 ft of piping and the heat exchanger. The heat exchanger will have a theoretical heat transfer rate of 35,786.5  and the heat transfer area is between 1.4 – 6.4 ft^2 depending on the overall heat transfer coefficient. The heat exchanger is a plate and shell heat exchanger that will adjust the specialty coating temperature to 92 °F. the coating then travels to the degasser where any remaining air bubbles are removed from the coating. From this point forward, it is especially important that there is no air entrapment. A second positive displacement screw pump moves the coating through 149 ft of piping to the machine tank and requires 2.36 kW of power. The machine tank is jacketed with an agitator with a volume of 420 gal.

Economic evaluation determined that the process, as currently designed, is highly profitable within the 10-year project life span. The calculated ROI was 887% with a PBP of 0.19 years. The net present value is $27,172,660.29 when the transition time between specialty and commodity coating is decreased from 7 hours to 2 hours. This is also under the condition that specialty coating takes up 89% of the production on the K2 paper machine and is being sold for $39 /msf.

Further evaluations were done to determine the sensitivity of the project to changes in the coating market. When coating production costs were increased by 5% and 10%, the project still proved to be highly profitable. The sensitivity tests were completed assuming production was still 1,400 ft/min with 89% of production being specialty coating. When the project was evaluated for future production of the K2 paper machine being 16% specialty compared to the current 11%, the project proved to be even more profitable with the ROI increasing to 954% and the PBP decreasing to 0.18 years.

Based on the findings, the current recommendations are proposed for future development of the additional degassing system on the K2 paper machine. We would recommend to (1) evaluate the current process for possible areas of optimization, such as pipe diameters and location changes for the equipment to decrease energy consumption and increase process efficiency; (2) Evaluate the current scheduling system to see if there is room for optimization to increase specialty coating run lengths, which would then decrease the amount of transitions needed; (3) Evaluate the capacity of the paper machine/Kalamazoo mill to determine if the additional system will cause strain to the site before project implementation.

Comments

Co-authored with:

Carson Klima

Morgan Herremans

Nicole Rodriguez

Access Setting

Honors Thesis-Restricted

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