US Pulp Research Articles

Pump Seal Design

How a US pulp and paper mill benefitted from a vertical pump seal casing upgrade

Techno-economic evaluation of industrial heat pump applications in US pulp and paper, textile, and automotive industries

Industrial process heat decarbonization through electrification could contribute significantly to climate change mitigation efforts. In the US industry, thermal processes accounted for more than two-thirds of the total final energy demand in 2021. Cross-cutting electrification technologies like industrial heat pumps are suitable for the process heat supply to several industrial unit operations in a sustainable way while also improving overall energy efficiency. This study employs a bottom-up approach to investigate the techno-enviro-economic potentials of deploying high-temperature and steam-generating heat pumps in US textile, pulp and paper, and automotive sectors in different timeframes. The results show that the annual technical potential energy and CO2 savings by electrifying heat supply are 310 PJ (or 36% of the projected energy demand) and 28 MtCO2 (or 71% of the projected CO2 emissions) in 2050 respectively, however, these incur additional costs in each sector (ranging between 5 and 18 $/GJ). The required heating capacity of industrial heat pumps is estimated at 15 GW, which translates roughly into a market of over 6000 heat pump units and an investment volume of $7 billion in the studied processes. Although there may be individual cost-effective opportunities for electrifying heat supply in specific industrial sites, the overall costs are estimated to be high in the three industrial sectors due to the large disparity between electricity and natural gas prices and low heat source temperatures. To overcome the identified techno-economic barriers, comprehensive action plans for different stakeholders are also given. This study provides novel insights that should inform policymakers’ and executives’ decisions about the electrification of the current and future US industrial heat supply in relevant industrial sectors.

Understanding Firms' Perspectives Toward Environmental Regulation

Why do some firms embrace environmental sustainability and others do not? Within any given industry, there are leaders and laggards. While extensive research has examined firms’ perspectives regarding the motivations, strategies, and outcomes related to the voluntary realm, there is a dearth of research related to firms’ perspectives regarding the regulatory realm. To better understand firms’ attitudes toward environmental regulation, I examine compliance and noncompliance with environmental regulation in the context of the US pulp and paper industry (PPI). I employ an inductive, multiple case study methodology to study regulatory tensions associated with environmental sustainability, as well as examine differences between firms compliant and non-compliant toward environmental regulation.

Liability of Middleness Revisited: The Advantages for Mid-Sized Competitors in Renewable Natural Resource Industries

ABSTRACTSize is an important antecedent of firm survival, and several studies theoretically sustain and empirically support a ‘liability of middleness’. Indeed, it is widely believed that companies should act strategically to either become large or remain small and occupy a niche position, because mid-sized firms face the strongest market selection pressures. This study challenges that logic in renewable natural resource industries. Measuring size as product-line scale and firm-level portfolio breadth, we argue that in industries characterized by cost competition, the lack of product differentiation, large capital investments, and sharp price oscillation, scale and breadth have a curvilinear effect on survival thatfavorsmid-sized firms rather than penalizing them. An empirical analysis of the US pulp and paper (P&P) industry over the period 1970–2000 strongly supports our arguments. This study is particularly relevant for emerging economies, in which natural resource industries represent an important portion of the total economic activity.

“Beating an undead zombie? Not yet”

Roger Luckhurst, Zombies: A Cultural History. London: Reaktion Books, 2015. 224pp. £16.00 (hbk).Sarah Juliet Lauro, The Transatlantic Zombie Slavery, Rebellion, and Living Death. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2015. 284pp. US$28.95 (pbk).Perhaps some researchers feel that the scholarship surrounding zombies has outlived its utility, but the continued interest just will not die, as the figure remains a trendy topic across a number of fields: sf, horror and gothic studies, posthumanism, film and media studies, to name just a few. That the zombie is linked to slavery by way of its roots and is viewed as a figure indicative of capitalist consumption - and that more recently it has been characterised by anxieties pertaining to pandemic contagions - has almost become common knowledge at this point, especially given the work of Sarah Juliet Lauro and Karen Embry, Kyle Bishop, Gerry Canavan and others over the past half-decade. Researching how exactly the zombie made such transformations cross-culturally and has consequently shifted its connotations, however, builds on such claims in novel and nuanced ways. If there is any truth to the notion that this popular figure's value to humanistic inquiry has gone stale, it seems that Roger Luckhurst's Zombies: A Cultural History and Lauro's The Transatlantic Zombie have breathed some life into the zombie.While sf studies has been interested in questions surrounding race and postcolonial studies for some time, especially given the increased attention to these topics after John Rieder's Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction (2008) and the popularity of sf by people of colour across the globe, probing the zombie's colonial history and historiography is timely. Lauro gives us a theoretical apparatus to understand and trace the zombie's origins in Haitian culture along with its transatlantic appropriations and re-appropriations. Luckhurst, in contrast, gives us a broader survey, very much focused on US cultural deployments in addition the zombie's 'globalization', while still including a substantial account of its background in Haitian culture. Together, these works' respective treatments of zombies cover similar ground but do so from distinct approaches and for distinct ends. Despite their different methods with respect to history, when reading Lauro and Luckhurst together, the zombie's history as a material phenomena, as myth and trope in cultural texts and as a metaphor can be divided into three categories: colonial history, twentieth-century US appropriation and deployment in contemporary media.Though zombies are known to emerge from Haitian culture and slavery, the precise conditions of this emergence and documentation of it as a 'real' phenomena in addition to the zombie as metaphor require nuanced contextual understanding and extensive study of the original texts to mention the term. Following a chronological trajectory, Zombies: A Cultural History's first five chapters chronicle the colonial origins of the zombie and its entrance into the early twentieth century. Luckhurst shows how the ritualistic practices of Vodou darkened the reputation of Haiti as primitive and savage territory, thereby denouncing the legitimacy of the slave revolt of 1791. He articulates how the link between Vodou, human sacrifice, cannibalism and poisoning contributed to the colonial gothic characterisation of Haiti as degenerate, a position that William Seabrook would later espouse rather than rebuke. Luckhurst shows how these discourses informed the zombie in 1930s US pulp fiction, alongside Seabrook's The Magic Island (1929) and what Luckhurst aptly terms 'the first movie cycle', namely White Zombie (Halperin US 1932) and I Walked with a Zombie (Tourneur US 1943). Particularly informative is the contextualisation of how Seabrook inspired White Zombie within an earlier popular trend of sensational expeditionary films that 'documented' exotic savagery in Africa and the Congo. Similar to Lauro, Luckhurst demythologises Seabrook's role as the central figure in making the zombie American. …

Analysis of emission reduction strategies for power boilers in the US pulp and paper industry

The US pulp and paper (PNP) industry utilizes a variety of fuels to provide energy for process needs, resulting in air emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOX), particulate matter (PM), and greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2). Emissions from this sector have largely declined and continue to decline steadily since the mid-1990s, reflecting changes in fuel types used and their sulfur content, fluctuation in PNP production, increase in the volume of recycling, efficiency gains throughout the sector, and capital investments for compliance with regulations. Because of the above factors, recent market trends favoring the use of natural gas over coal, and more demanding regulatory limits, it is reasonable to expect that air emissions from the sector will continue to decline in the near future. Boilers have been the dominant source of SO2, NOX, PM, and CO2 emissions for the sector. It would, therefore, be of interest to understand how air pollution controls have been applied to date on new, existing, and replaced units, as well as the cost and emission reductions associated with expanding their use throughout the sector. In the work described here, the Universal Industrial Sectors Integrated Solutions (UISIS) model developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is used to examine the emission reduction potential and cost of controls. This paper briefly characterizes air emissions from boilers operating in the PNP sector and reviews the menu of air pollution control technologies applicable to the sector. Then, after describing the UISIS PNP model, modeling results are presented, in which several illustrative air emission reduction strategies are assessed, including fuel switching, installation of air pollution control equipment, and implementation of energy efficiency measures.

Sustainability options in pulp and paper making: Costs of conserved energy and carbon reduction in the US

Abstract Adoption of energy efficient technologies is considered a key sustainability strategy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in global industries. This article aims to assess costs of energy savings and carbon reduction from applying energy efficiency technologies in the US pulp and paper sector. Applicable efficiency measures were identified and their cost effectiveness was evaluated in two historical years – 1994 and 2006. Potential savings of final energy use resulting from applicable sustainability options were estimated as 707 PJ in 1994 and 1064 PJ in 2006, respectively, corresponding to approximately 32% of the sector's annual final energy use in 1994 and 62% in 2006. The associated carbon-emission reduction was 8.1 million ton of carbon (MtC) in 1994 and 11.8 MtC in 2006, corresponding to 26% and 45% of sector's total energy-related carbon emissions in 1994 and 2006, respectively. Using the concepts of cost of conserved energy and cost of carbon reduction, we estimated that cost effective sustainability options contributed to final energy savings in the range of 15–25% of the annual energy use, and carbon-emission reduction from 14% to 20% of annual carbon emissions from the sector.

Greenhouse and Field Response of Southern Pine Seedlings to Pulp Mill Residues Applied as Soil Amendments

Pulp and paper mills produce organic wastewater treatment residuals, inorganic process residues, and ash that have potential value as soil amendments in southern pine plantations. Chemical characteristics of 18 organic and 10 inorganic residues from 11 southern US pulp and paper mills were determined, and loblolly pine seedling growth response to their use as soil amendments was evaluated in two greenhouse studies. Fourteen of these 28 residues were then used in field studies in which they were incorporated into soil during establishment of pine plantations at three different sites. Under greenhouse conditions, seedling growth was increased by soil incorporation of most of the secondary wastewater treatment residuals at rates equivalent to 22.4 or 134.4 Mg · ha−1. In contrast to these greenhouse studies, under field conditions seedling growth was either unaffected or reduced when secondary wastewater treatment residuals were incorporated into soil at these same rates at plantation establishment. Seedling growth in soil amended with primary wastewater treatment residuals was generally no greater and in some cases significantly less than in the untreated control in both greenhouse and field studies. However, some evidence for growth improvement was observed when these residuals were added to sandy soils of a flatwoods site. We observed little short-term growth benefit from incorporation of inorganic causticizing residues or ash in either the greenhouse study or in field studies of pine plantation establishment. Recycling pulp mill wastewater treatment residuals and process residues to forestland may be a viable recycling/reuse alternative, but growth responses will vary among materials and soil types and are relatively small. Secondary wastewater treatment residuals have the greatest potential to improve growth, but current silvicultural operations would need to be adapted to effectively use these materials.

Further Examination of the Market Valuation of Environmental Capital Expenditures by Pulp and Paper Companies

In this study I use the US pulp and paper industry to explore the equity market’s valuation of environmental capital expenditures. I replicate and extend a study by Clarkson, Li, and Richardson that bifurcates the industry into high and low polluting groups. As with their study, I find evidence indicating that the market values environmental capital expenditures by over-compliant firms while attaching no such value to the same expenditures by minimally compliant firms. I do not find that the market assesses unrecorded liabilities to firms that are minimally compliant. My extension also seeks to address two possible specification issues in the Clarkson, et. Al. approach. The first, levels model they used is unbiased but inefficient. Their model scaled by common shares outstanding attempts to rectify this inefficiency but may not be the optimal choice of scaling variable. My results suggest that a “Best Available Technology” approach to environmental regulation may carry additional incentives provided by the capital markets.

Transnationalism and sexual identity in literature: from the French canon to US pulp fiction

AbstractThis article considers the afterlives of male-authored Sapphic fiction produced in nineteenth-century France by prominent writers (including Diderot, Balzac, Gautier, Baudelaire, Belot, Louÿs, Zola, Mendès). It follows the transnational and trans-temporal movement of these enduring images to the United States of the 1950s, a moment when the homophile movement emerged and the Daughters of Bilitis was founded. In particular, it studies the impact of French literature on distant identity formation by examining traces in lesbian pulp fiction. Although such representations of female homosexuality were arbitrary and ideological products targeted to an audience of men, they also beckoned to unintended readers, women in search of images and a vocabulary with which to identify their sexual attractions during a time in which there was no public discourse about homosexuality. French literature thus contributed to the growing portfolio of portraits that would amount to a heritage for sexually nonconformist women in search of identities and drawn to images of and explanations for their difference.RésuméCet article examine l'évolution de la fiction saphique du dix-neuvième siècle inaugurée par les auteurs canoniques (Diderot, Balzac, Gautier, Baudelaire, Belot, Louÿs, Zola, Mendès) aux États-Unis dans les années 1950, au moment de l'apparition du mouvement homophile et de la fondation du groupe lesbien, les Daughters of Bilitis. Il s'intéresse en particulier à l'effet qu'a eu ce genre littéraire sur la formation identitaire en examinant ses traces dans le roman populaire "lesbian pulp". Quoiqu'arbitraires et destinées aux hommes, ces représentations de l'homosexualité féminine ont attiré également des lectrices à la recherche d'images et d'un discours correspondant à leur désir, à un moment où il n'existait pas de discours public positif sur l'homosexualité. La littérature française a ainsi contribué à un catalogue de portraits qui allaient devenir une sorte d'héritage pour les femmes de sexualité non-conformiste, en quête d'une identité et qui étaient attirées par ces représentations de leur différence.Where does the public obtain its image of the lesbian? From a rare newspaper story, a not-too-infrequent joke, a disparaging rumor, an occasional occurrence in a school or office, and from a large and growing body of literature.

Factors affecting innovation and pollution-reduction performance of environmental regulations

The effects of market conditions on output, total discharges, and pollution prevention and pollution control research and development expenditure are investigated under two regulatory tools in the US pulp and paper industry. A two-stage simultaneous Cournot game with a performance standard and a tax on adsorbable organic halides (AOX) is used to analyze the effects of changes in market-demand elasticity, input prices, and asymmetries in abatement and production processes and across scenario comparisons. The findings indicate that these factors affect the research and development portfolio of the firms, total paper production and discharges of pollutants, and compositions of dirty and clean firms. The effects of the factors are also found to be different under the different regulatory tools, a point that suggests sound and effective regulatory design should consider these factors. This study promotes the understanding of how market-specific factors affect the performance of regulatory tools in inducing research and development and reducing pollution. It should also provide a framework for policy designers to analyze economic and environmental behavior of firms in industry-specific regulatory design.

Pollution abatement and environmental equity: A dynamic study

We study pollution abatement and environmental equity in a dynamic panel model using data for 234 plants in the US pulp and paper industry observed over the period 1985–1997. We suggest a theoretical model for the plant manager who incorporates regulatory pressure into his calculations of optimal amounts of pollution. Assuming actual pollution abatement exhibits a sluggish adjustment process, the theoretical model leads to an empirical AR(1) panel model. We estimate our model using GMM with both “temporally lagged” and “spatially lagged” instruments and find significant evidence supporting the partial adjustment model for both particulate matters less than 10 μm and sulfur dioxide. We find some environmental inequity with respect to the children (under 6 years) and adults with no high school diploma. Our findings show no evidence of environmental inequity against African–Americans, Hispanics, other minority races, or the poor.

Environmental Policy with Endogenous Technology from a Game Theoretic Perspective: The Case of the US Pulp and Paper Industry

The merits of different types of regulatory tools in eliminating pollution and at the same time inducing innovation have long been an interest of researchers in both environmental economics and industrial organization. Although there is a substantial theoretical literature investigating the potential for various environmental policies to attain these dual goals, this is a challenging empirical problem because every industry has its own inherent characteristics that play an important role in determining the performance of different regulatory tools. The majority of the work to date focuses on pollution abatement while leaving pollution prevention understudied. In most of the literature firms are also assumed to be symmetric. Asymmetries among firms add another degree and level of complexity to their strategic interactions, and affect the performance of different regulatory tools. This paper investigates the performance of two alternative regulatory tools, an emissions performance standard and an emissions tax, in reducing pollution and inducing pollution prevention and abatement R&D in the US pulp and paper industry. We construct a model representing the industry in an asymmetric Cournot duopoly framework, calibrate the model to disaggregated industry data, and run scenarios to replicate the behavior of the firms in an imperfectly competitive output market. Our results suggest that pollution prevention R&D can respond quite differently than abatement R&D to different policy instruments. The results indicate that R&D spillovers among firms play crucial role in technology development and strategies of the firms. Our results also suggest that strategic interactions between firms in an imperfectly competitive industry can have significant impacts of the levels of both types of R&D.

From wood to fuels: Integrating biofuels and pulp production

Bioethanol currently contributes ∼2% to the total US transportation fuels mix, and another ∼0.01% is based on biodiesel. To make a substantial contribution to the United States' energy portfolio, biofuels production needs to grow substantially over the next decade by a factor of 10 or more. Although the contribution of agro-energy crops and agriculture waste for biofuels production is being intensively developed, the potential of the forest products industry to contribute to this effort has been generally underestimated. The forest products industry is one of a few nationally based industries that have the necessary skill set and infrastructure available to process sufficient biomass for the rapid short-term development and commercialization of biofuel and biochemical technologies. On an annual basis, the US pulp and paper industry collects and processes approximately 108 million tons of wood for the production of pulp and paper in a sustainable manner. Wood extractives from pulping provide approximately ...

Capital vintage and climate change policies: the case of US pulp and paper

Abstract The climate change policy debate and ensuing discussions about industrial energy use and carbon emissions have highlighted the need to: (a) aggregate engineering information to a level relevant for economic policy analysis while maintaining sufficient detail so that results are meaningful for industry decision makers, (b) properly represent an industry’s capital vintage structure to better understand inertia associated with changes in aggregate industrial emissions profiles, and (c) identify policy instruments that leverage an industry’s potential for technological change such that carbon emissions can be noticeably reduced. This paper presents an econometric analysis of energy use and emissions profiles of the US Pulp and Paper Industry and uses the resulting set of equations to specify a dynamic model for the analysis of select climate change policies. Scenarios of cost of carbon, energy tax, and investment-led policies indicate that a combination of cost of carbon and investment-led policies can achieve the desired result of rapidly improving overall efficiency of the industry and promoting changes in fuel mix, which together can result in drastic reductions of carbon emissions.

Climate change policies and capital vintage effects: the cases of US pulp and paper, iron and steel, and ethylene

Changes in material use, energy use and emissions profiles of industry are the result of complex interrelationships among a multitude of technological and economic drivers. To better understand and guide such changes requires that attention is paid to the time-varying consequences that technology and economic influences have on an industry's choice of inputs and its associated (desired and undesired) outputs. This paper lays out an approach to improving our understanding of the dynamics of large industrial systems. The approach combines engineering and econometric analysis with a detailed representation of an industry's capital stock structure. A transparent dynamic computer modeling approach is chosen to integrate information from these analyses in ways that foster participation of stakeholders from industry and government agencies in all stages of the modeling process—from problem definition and determination of system boundaries to generation of scenarios and interpretation of results. Three case studies of industrial energy use in the USA are presented—one each for the iron and steel, pulp and paper, and ethylene industry. Dynamic models of these industries are described and then used to investigate alternative carbon emissions and investment-led policies. A comparison of results clearly points towards two key issues: the need for industry specific policy approaches in order to effectively influence industrial energy use, fuel mix and carbon emissions, and the need for longer time horizons than have typically been chosen for the analysis of industrial responses to climate change policies.

‘Optimal’ pollution abatement—whose benefits matter, and how much?

We examine the determinants of environmental regulatory activity (inspections and enforcement actions) and levels of air and water pollution for 409 US pulp and paper mills, using data for 1985–1997. We focus on the benefits to the surrounding population from pollution abatement. Plants with larger benefits emit less pollution, as do those with more kids and elders nearby. Plants in poor areas emit more pollution, though (surprisingly) we find less pollution in minority areas. Out-of-state neighbors seem to count less than in-state ones, although this effect diminishes if the bordering state's Congressional delegation is strongly pro-environment. We use ‘spatially lagged’ instrumental variables to control for the potential endogeneity of which individuals choose to locate near the plant. The results for regulatory activity are noticeably less significant than the emissions results.

00/03674 Impacts of market-based climate change policies on the US pulp and paper industry

00/03674 Impacts of market-based climate change policies on the US pulp and paper industry

Impacts of market-based climate change policies on the US pulp and paper industry

Much of the policy debates on climate issues have centered on the optimal level and timing of policy interventions that cost-effectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We briefly review the range of policy issues in our paper and assess the impact that climate-change policies may have on energy use and carbon emissions in the US pulp and paper industry. We then present results from time series-based analyses of changes in technologies and fuel mix, and compare the results with engineering-based technology analyses of US pulp and paper production (for a copy of the model and software send e-mail to mruth@bu.edu.). Projections, based on information for eight paper and paperboard categories, are presented for the years 1995–2020. The findings indicate that, under a wide range of specifications and policy assumptions, carbon emissions from fossil fuel use per ton of product are likely to decline. When combined with investment incentives, an additional cost-effective reduction in carbon emissions per ton of product will be realized. However, expected increases in output from the industry are likely to be higher than the reductions in energy and carbon intensities. The policy implications of these findings are discussed.

The Hard Question of Squishy Machines

The Hard Question of Squishy Machines