Project: Strengthening Process Efficiencies in a Changing Industry
Funded by: Mitacs, and CBPPL.
This study aims to improve process efficiencies while supporting the development of products that best respond to market trends in the context of a post-COVID-19 globalized market. From a process engineering perspective, the proposed activities seek to improve the competitiveness of Corner Brook Pulp and Paper Limited (CBPPL) through waste management to both reduce the load on water treatment systems and obtain value-added products from wastewaters, and investigate recovery of lignin, hemicellulose, and cellulose recovery from mill residues for further product development in biomaterials. From a market and business research perspective, this study’s aims are twofold. The first is in response to the unknown effects that the introduction of new products from engineering work would have on CBPPL's suppliers and other businesses in the forestry industry in Newfoundland (NL forestry network). This study seeks to understand how the businesses in the NL forestry network act and interact, given the current changes in the industry and the development of new and innovative products. This portion of the study aims to improve our understanding of how this network experiences the tensions related to the need for change and the tendency for stagnation, and how the network can cope with change with the introduction of new products. The study offers possibilities for more environmentally sustainable processing, potential reduction of current expenses, and the potential creation of new revenue streams to increase competitiveness for CBPPL while strengthening university-industry collaborations between Memorial University, CBPPL and industry. This collaboration further develops subject matter expertise in Corner Brook and Newfoundland and offers students valuable experience with applied research and industry trends.
Principal Investigators:
- Dr. William Newell (Assistant Professor of Business, School of Arts and Social Science, Grenfell Campus)
- Dr. Kelly Anne Hawboldt (Professor, Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science, Memorial University of Newfoundland)
Interns:
Thesis title: Examining the effects of process variables during paper making on sheet caliper-An analysis of baseline statistics compared to Neural Networks.