A $700,000 boiler trial research project has been proven successful at one of our southern mills.

The new boiler control system technology that was trialled at Proserpine Mill last year was part of a $700,000 research project. The success of this trial means the technology could be expanded to more sites in the near future.

Technical Services Manager Rob Peirce said the new technology, installed on Proserpine’s Boiler 1 during the 2019 crush, had taken almost the full season to bed down but ultimately delivered promising results.

“We did a lot of modelling and experimenting. It was a real work in progress,” Rob said.

“By the last month of the season we had adopted a new control scheme that was working well.

“The team at Proserpine was great to work with.”

Wilmar partnered with Emeritus Laureate Professor Graham Goodwin and Dr Diego Carrasco from the University of Newcastle on the project, which aimed to utilise more advanced control techniques to create more stable boiler operations.

“We chose Boiler 1 at Proserpine for the project because we knew it was a difficult boiler, and that we could experiment on it and not impact factory operations too much,” Rob said.

World-renowned control theorist Professor Karl Åström from the Lund University in Sweden visited Proserpine in September as part of the project.

“He toured the mill, tuned controllers, talked with operators and met with management,” Rob said.

Professor Åström also attended a one-day workshop in Townsville, at which operators and engineers from the four milling regions had the opportunity to discuss issues around factory control systems.

Rob said there were plans to hold a similar workshop, along with training, with Professor Goodwin mid-next year.

Professor Åström said Wilmar was approaching work around control systems in a sensible way.

“It’s doing the simple things first, and making sure they work, and gradually putting in more and more advanced controllers,” he said.

“It helps to make the operations more efficient and encourages younger workers to stay in the industry, to learn more about control systems.”

Rob said the Australian Research Council funding allocated to the control system project would run out in March next year but it was hoped Wilmar would further the good work started at Proserpine.

“We would eventually like to see this technology applied across all of our factories," he said.