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Water Blast Cleaning: No Mill Management Oversight Required
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Water Blast Cleaning: No Mill Management Oversight Required


We might be moving toward a “paperless” society, but there’s no arguing with the fact that we still go through a lot of paper every year. Paper mills around the country are still quite busy producing rolls and sheets by the million, and it’s crucial for them to minimize downtime to meet their production goals. Water blast cleaning can greatly reduce that downtime, as a recent project of ours proved. Pulp Nonfiction A stock chest is a large vessel that is integral equipment within the paper processing production unit. It stores pulp in preparation for being pumped to the next stage of processing. Over time, a stock chest accumulates a large amount of deposit within the vessel and its components that has to be cleaned out to maintain efficiency and paper quality. For this task, we got out the equipment we affectionately call the “Big Pump”—a water blastcleaning machine that is so substantial it has to be transported by tractor on its own flatbed trailer. Ready for Action Our paper mill client had an annual outage planned for maintenance, and we were ready to tackle the tough stock chest cleaning task. When our high pressure water blasting personnel arrived on the scene, one of the first things that pulp mill maintenance supervision noticed about them was that they were ready to start the job promptly even after completing a thorough Job Safety Hazard Analysis (including LO/TO/Try) with all involved personnel. They didn’t need to be taught about the mill’s equipment, and didn’t need to be “baby-sat” (the client’s words, not ours!) like experienced with several other predecessor cleaning contractors from previous outages. Another Job Completed On Time Our water blast cleaning experts cleaned the stock chest in record time – which included utilizing an automated/high volume 3-D device --picked up after themselves on the job site, and demobilized considerably more quickly than the client had expected. This saved the mill a significant amount of the downtime and expense that it had allocated for the job—a very welcomebonus! An inspection by mill personnel confirmed that the area was “spotless” (again, the client’s words, not ours!). Thanks to the “Big Pump” and its automated tooling, complemented by our experienced team members, another client was satisfied and ready to get theirpaper machine back into production.

 

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