:: Home
> The
Mills >
Pulp & Papermill > Chip Handling & Storage
|
A pulp and paper mill like this
one in St. Helens, Oregon, needs lots of wood fiber
in order to produce paper products. From where does
this fiber come? Most is residual wood fiber from
sawmills
and veneer
plants, and comes to the mill as hardwood and
softwood chips. Both softwood (like wood from
conifer
trees like Douglas-fir, pine, spruce, hemlock, and
larch) and hardwood (mostly alder) chips are
used. St. Helen's receives upwards of 100 truckloads
of chips every day!
|
Related Information:
|
|
|
Wood chips used by the mill arrives by either truck or traincar.
One truck carries about 40 tons of chips. In this picture, a truck is
being tipped so that the wood chips fall from the trailer... |
| ...into
the chip bin. The bottom of the chip bin is actually a conveyor belt, which will
carry the wood past a magnet that removes metallic debris that might hurt machinery
in the mill. |
|
|
|
The
conveyor belt carries the wood to a location where the wood can be sorted (by
hardwood and softwood) and piled into large piles. |
| The
chips are dumped from the conveyor belt onto the stacker/reclaimer.
|
|
|
|
The stacker is a rotating conveyor belt on a long arm that
pours the chips into piles in 3 different yards: one for softwood, and
one for hardwood. |
|
The chips are then reclaimed by the long arm of the reclaimer,
which is like a series of shovels on an arm. The reclaimer pulls the chips onto
another conveyor belt that carries the type and amount of chip that the mill needs
to keep the mill running at full-capacity.
|
|
The pulp mill is our next stop!
|
©2005 Oregon Forest Resources Institute. All Rights Reserved.