Impact on carbon emissions applying the sustainable EffiSludge wastewater treatment concept to the Nordic pulp- and paper industry

The pulp- and paper industry (PPI) faces a great challenge in finding new ways to reduce its overall carbon emissions. Large quantities of water are used in the pulp- and paper making process. In this context, a more sustainable wastewater treatment with a lower carbon footprint is of relevance for the PPI. Applied to a pulp- and paper mill (PPM) in Norway, the ongoing demonstration project “EffiSludge for LIFE” lowers the wastewater treatments (WWT) energy consumption while turning residual waste (bio sludge) into energy by implementing a new wastewater treatment concept. The aim of this study was to evaluate the current carbon footprint from a hypothetical PPM WWT plant, the potential lowering of the carbon footprint when applying the EffiSludge concept and the benefits in a larger scale assuming EffiSludge would be applied at all of the PPMs WWT in the Nordic countries represented by Sweden, Norway and Finland. An estimation of a current and future carbon footprint from one example mill was provided through the construction of one baseline and two case scenarios. Results from a laboratory biomethane potential experiment together with the responses from a survey and contributions from one example mill provided relevant input to the scenarios. The major impact on carbon emissions in the scenarios came from reducing electricity needed to aerate the biological WWT step. The maximum current carbon footprint from the parts of the WWT process included in the baseline scenario was 9.6-13 kg CO2-eq/kg pulp and the estimated future carbon footprint when implementing the EffiSludge concept was estimated as 3.6-5.9 kg CO2-eq/kg pulp. A reduction of 6-8 kg CO2-eq/kg pulp could be expected by implementing the EffiSludge concept. If the EffiSludge concept was introduced in all of the WWTP connected with Nordic PPMs a reduction of the carbon footprint with 55-180 million kg CO2-eq could be expected each year. This would reduce the total carbon emissions from the European PPI with 0.2-0.5 % annuall