Broke Management

Broke management sounds like what I did with my finances while I was in college. In reality it's the non postconsumer waste that is put back into the sheet. So it's kinda recycled, but not really. For reference, fiber that comes straight from wood is called virgin fiber. Back to the broke, every paper machine produces broke. Broke comes from the trim off the machine, that's the edges that are trimmed off as the sheet goes into the press section. The trim goes into the couch pit which then goes to some kind of broke thickening process to increase the consistency for ease of storage. Another source of broke is when there is a break on the machine. A sheet break is when the sheet tears or breaks and the sheet is generally put into the couch pit while the machine is being rethreaded. Since a break can last anywhere from 10 minutes to over an hour, a considerable amount of broke can be built up. The last source of broke is rejected paper. Reject paper is repulped using some kind of hydrapulper or the like. It's like a big blender.

Okay, so now we have all this broke, what do we do with it? As I said earlier it gets thickened and sent to some storage tank. From there it is sent back to the sheet. It's a little more complicated than that, but we'll keep it simple for now. Depending on the grade of paper being made the broke can be anywhere from 5% to 15%. The benefits of broke is it closes the sheet. It makes it less porous. The bad part is that it can over do it and seal the sheet which is detrimental to drainage. If that occurs more broke will be made.

So to properly manage broke levels, operators should add as much as they can since it has to be used. Dry end operators should also keep an eye on the broke level so that they don't make too much from reject rolls. This is especially important going into an outage. An outage is maintenance downtime that can last anywhere from 12 hours to forever. Maybe not forever, but sometimes it seems like it. There are times when broke storage tanks must be cleaned out or inspected, during these times broke should be reduced to the lowest levels possible. In mills where there are multiple machines the broke may be sent to the other machines if the grades being made are similar. Issues occur when the broke has chemicals such as fluorescent dye present.

So if broke is managed properly money will be saved. After all it is still fiber. It may not be virgin but it's still good.