That’s why I was careful to note that paper mills use energy, but the energy consumption for the entire mill, pulp and paper both, is much lower than the 2.5 MW-hrs per ton quoted by the link we saw earlier in the thread.
I just got that link to work, and found that they were discussing thermo-mechanical pulping of newsprint, not kraft pulping which is what paper towels are made from, so it is not really relevant to the whole paper vs. blower discussion. The same site in this link, here, states the net power requirements of a kraft pulp mill as 17 kW-hr/ADT. 100 kW-hr/ADT is used for bleaching, which is not applied to most paper towel grades, so the net positive energy for a kraft mill making typical brown pulp is 83 kW-hr/ADT of pulp.
Bill and Una. Thanks for the clarifications. I knew it was dangerous to quote figures about an industry I was not familiar with, but I hoped someone with more knowledge might chime in. My only first hand experience of pulp and paper was seeing a pulp mill in Norway. It had a massive hydroelectric plant which generated lots of electricity to (as I recall) drive its MVR fans (I think this was the main power user but may well be wrong). Anyway, with that final qualitative observation, I will bow out and try to absorb some of the new information I have gleaned from this thread.
