Energies 2021 , 14 , 1161
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electricity demand in 2017, through the use of high-pressure steam in turbines (about 5% of this electricity is produced by on-site hydropower plants) [9]. Subsequently, the steam output at medium/low-pressure is applied to production processing, making the sector completely self-sufficient in terms of steam generation. The excess heat and electricity are also fed into the grid [9]. Based on Austropapier [9] and Statistics Austria data [5,28,29], Table 4 presents a clear distribution of energy consumption (total, final, and useful), energy self-production, and system self-sufficiency in the year 2017.
Table4. Energy consumption and production in the Austrian Pulp and Paper sector in the year 2017 [5,9,28,29]
∑ Sum Fuel Consumption Thermal Energy Electrical Energy
Total energy consumption
(TWh)
22.5 20.8
18
- -
4.532 4.532 4.532 2.856
Final energy consumption (TWh) Useful energy consumption (TWh)
16.22
15.84 15.45
- - -
11.312 12.595 111.34
Self-energy production
(TWh)
Self-sufficiency
(%)
68
63
As shown in Table 4, a large amount of fuel is required to generate energy (heat and electricity). In 2017, the total fuel consumption was 18 TWh, of which about 40% was fossil fuels (e.g., coal, oil, natural gas) and 60% was biofuels (e.g., bark, sludge, and black liquor) [28,29]. The use of more renewable energy and biofuel instead of fossil fuel energy to reduce the fossil fuel CO 2 emission is a priority of Austrian climate and energy policy. The Austrian P&P industry has also followed this policy [9,30]. The pulp and paper industry, on one hand, is a significant energy consumer, but on the other hand, it is a source of energy production, by producing black liquor and waste wood as biofuel during the production processing. Hence the industry has decided to use more inside-produced biofuels instead of fossil fuels. This can be seen in the historical development of fuel consumption in the sector from 2000 to 2017 in Figure 3; it is evident that the energy source has changed significantly. While fossil fuel consumption decreased dramatically from 60% in the year 2000 to 40% in 2017, the share of and biofuel increased from 40% to 60% during this time.
Figure3. Historical trend of fuel consumption in the P&P industry in Austria [9,30–34].
To give a general overview of the energy flow in the pulp and paper sector, Figure 4 shows a Sankey diagram in which all fuel types and the Austrian P&P sector’s own energy production are considered as a case study.
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