In an era of drought, with fresh water becoming an ever more precious commodity, many manufacturers are aiming to reduce their impact on the environment and practice sustainability.

Corrugated plants are large consumers of water, with corrugator and Flexo wash water being sources of waste-water in particular.

Many corrugated plants will utilize waste-water treatment systems that are both expensive to operate and despite their use, still result in a source of waste-water.

For years, corrugating plants have tried to use both treated and untreated waste-water in starch adhesive preparation. Unfortunately, results were mixed.

Because of the inconsistency of the waste-water, the challenges always remained the same: variations in pH, and a wide range of suspended and or dissolved solids.

Even using the waste-water in only the secondary portion of the starch cook process provided marginal results at best.
With today’s faster corrugators and the need to reduce the amount of starch applied to the board, consistency of the starch becomes paramount.

As a result, few, if any plants are using untreated waste-water in the preparation of corrugating starch. They are in fact spending thousands of dollars a month to treat their waste-water, haul the solid particulate to a dump, and pay to put the treated water into the sewer.

The innovative Visocmeter when used in conjunction with our proprietary mixing process in the FlexaMix, allows for the use of untreated waste-water, both starch and flexo, in virtually the entire batch process water.
This allows the starch preparation system to become in essence a true zero-discharge process, capable of using a plants entire waste-water discharge from the corrugator and flexo’s.

The key to this is the Viscosity Detection and Control System. This system is used during the entire starch batch process to continually monitor viscosity by automatically modifying the mixing procedure and formula to accommodate for variations in pH and solids.

It has been shown that the use of the starch system with the Viscosity Detection and Control System, in conjunction with this new proprietary mixing process, can significantly reduce the need for and use of a waste-water treatment system.
This can save a company tens of thousands of dollars in chemicals and waste disposal alone.

In addition, with the better bonding capabilities and reduced energy consumption, ROI’s for the system have been shown to be as short as 12 months.

These financial savings, paired with a corrugating facility being able to achieve zero-discharge status, are not only good for the bottom line, but for our environment as well.