Suzano Papel e Celulose S.A., Mucuri, Bahia - Brazil

At its Mucuri site, located in the southern part of the Bahia state, Suzano currently produces 680,000 t/y of pulp and paper (440,000t/y of kraft pulp and 240,000 t/y of printing and writing paper).

The Mucuri Mill employs around 760 people today. This workforce is expected to increase to 900 in the future.

In 2004, the Suzano group decided to build a new, large kraft pulp line (1,000,000 t/y) at its Mucuri site, in order to raise its global pulp production to 1, 680,000 t/y by 2007. With this output, Suzano Papel e Celulose will rank among the world's ten largest pulp producers.

As part of this project, Suzano needed to increase its wastewater treatment capacity and efficiency, keeping its environmental performance within the World Bank Guidelines for Pulp and Paper industries.

The key project objectives were:

• treat the increased COD, BOD and other polluting loads to the international standards.
• secure high availability and optimized performance of the plant

To meet the needs of Suzano Papel e Celulose, Veolia Water Solutions & Technologies Brazil designed an innovative solution including:

• ­dedicated cooling tower,
• ­increased aeration capacity of the existing aerated lagoons, 
• ­three Moving Bed Bio Reactors (MBBR) of 5500 m³ each, to be placed downstream the aerated lagoons,
• ­two AF-Press™ screw presses downstream the pre-dewatering units; maximum sludge dewatering capacity is 80 t DS/d; dry solids content is over 40%.

The scope of supply for this Turn-Key contract includes all necessary equipment and ancillary systems and services.