That the environment has moved to a very high position on the agenda for panel mills in most of the world is obvious. Formaldehyde emission has been an increasingly important topic in recent years, while particulate emissions (mainly dust) have been controlled in most countries and regions for many years.
In the increasingly global warming and energy-conscious world in which we live, further regulations have been added to the panel mills’ regulatory burden, making emissions control not an option, but a necessity, in most countries.
Perhaps most regions of China are the exception to this rule, but it seems unlikely that that situation will remain for many more years.
So, the pressure is on to make all panel mills as environmentally-friendly as possible and that is where Scheuch comes in. In 1963 Alois Scheuch obviously saw this potential market when he took over his parents’ business which was involved in building and in ductwork for ventilation systems. He had just five employees at that time.
The future direction of the company was set the following year when Alois Scheuch installed a simple cyclone as a de-dusting system for a small furniture manufacturer.
In 1979 the company developed the first bag filter and in 1985 the first patented ‘Impuls’ cleaning system for bag filters. The specific design of the nozzles is claimed to offer very effective cleaning, resulting, says Scheuch, in low operating costs for the filters.
“That system is still the basis for our systems today,” said Andreas Köck, general manager for the wood based panel division of Scheuch GmbH. “We still use the same principle, improved and optimized over the years.”
Another major step forward for the company came in 1998, with the development of the SABA biological scrubber system for removing volatile organic compounds such as formaldehyde from MDF dryer emissions.
This is just a quick sample of the company’s development – more detail later. The point is, that development has thrust the company to a turnover of more than 150m in 2008 and a group employee figure of 780, with 640 of those employed in Scheuch’s large manufacturing facility in Aurolzmünster, Austria – an impressive increase since 1963. And the company is still a private, family-owned business with Stefan Scheuch as a joint managing director with responsibility for the technical side of the business and the workshop; Herbert Kendler is responsible for the sales, marketing and finance operations.
Scheuch sees the challenges to be addressed by the industry as: Global climate change; the issue of particulate matter; increasing costs for energy and raw material; production processes which emphasise efficiency; and resource conservation in production processes.
The company believes that its technologies for producing clean air, with a high degree of operating safety and efficiency, are making a significant contribution to solving these challenges by reducing fine dust and pollutants; and by reducing CO2 emissions with energy saving and heat recovery systems.
Scheuch has wholly-owned sales operations in Lauenau and Rudersberg in Germany, in Prievidza, Slovakia and in Canada in London, Ontario.
It also has additional manufacturing facilities under the name of Scheuch sro in Prievidza, which supplies components to the Aurolzmünster factory.
Installation on customers’ sites is carried out by SGS Industrial Services GmbH, based in Dorf in Austria. Scheuch owns 34% of SGS. “We get a good quality service from SGS because they have a good knowledge of our equipment and its installation – we work closely together,” said Mr Köck.
Scheuch operates in five main business areas: The wood processing industry; wood based panels; metals; industrial minerals; and energy.
The company emphasises that it is not just a product supplier to the panel industry but a supplier of systems for both the ‘dry’ side – de-dusting and pneumatic conveying – and the ‘wet’ side – exhaust gas cleaning for flue gas and press exhaust. This includes consulting, project planning and basic and detail engineering.
“No other supplier delivers this complete range of emission control,” said Mr Köck.
Scheuch’s cleaning systems go into the MDF, particleboard and OSB industries and also into finishing lines such as lacquering and coating. They are to be found in just about every area of the panel production and finishing line.
For chip preparation lines, forming, finishing and sanding lines, the company supplies bag filters, circular filters, cyclones, rotary valves, fans and ducts.
For the energy plant it supplies dry electrostatic precipitators (ESP) and fans.
For the drying process, it is again rotary valves, fans, cyclones and ducting and, for emissions, the Scheuch dryer cleaning product programme.
Another patented system is the SWSF fibre sifter, which is an air grader.
Then we come to the press itself where Scheuch supplies its press exhaust system.
The emphasis of the patented SWSF fibre sifter is on high-efficiency separation and part of the patent is the recirculation of the air and targeted delivery of hot air into the system. The company says this circuit is a prerequisite for heating air economically because the outgoing air volume is kept to a minimum and thus a reduced intake of fresh air is required.
It also says that a variably adjustable operating temperature of up to 80ºC further increases press production.
The system also has two beneficial side-effects, says Scheuch. One is in achieving 15% lower pressure loss when compared to sifters which are not closed-loop systems, thus reducing power consumption in the fans. The other is that the fibres are conditioned, reducing moisture fluctuations.
Within the sifter itself, patented opening rollers are claimed to guarantee even fibre distribution and aeration across the entire width of the sifter as the fibre enters. The first sifter level then creates an air curtain and feeds the fine fibre upwards, while the second sifter level is designed to ensure the degree of separation is reliably maintained.
The sifter has an effective output of up to 40 tons per hour and of course conforms to ATEX regulations with regard to explosion protection.
The majority of the equipment supplied by Scheuch is manufactured from scratch in its own extensive workshops in Aurolzmünster. Machine casings, fans and ductwork are all made there from ‘raw’ steel and only items such as electric motors are bought in. The company finds this gives it the quality control that it needs, said Christian Pucher, marketing and communications manager, as we toured the production area. Scheuch has ISO 9001 quality certification.
It is not just the machines themselves that are subjected to rigorous R&D (on which Scheuch spends around €3m a year) to make them economical and efficient to run. The behaviour of the air stream in the bends in the ducting is also analysed and the air stream optimised in the pursuit of reducing abrasion of the pipes; and of reducing energy consumption.
Employing this air stream optimisation, the company says it has achieved savings of  18,000 a year in a suction plant with a 100,000m3 per hour air capacity.
Turning to the ‘wet’ side of the business, Scheuch has a number of product steps for dryer emission control (dryer emissions being themselves necessarily wet of course).
Biological control is mainly related to formaldehyde removal in MDF lines. “Regenerative thermal oxidisers (RTOs) use natural gas, which gives high operating costs and additionally creates CO2 emissions,” said Mr Köck. “With our biological systems we guarantee up to 95% formaldehyde removal.
“The patented BIOSENA combines a WESP [wet electrostatic precipitator] with a biological system and we offer a range of treatments depending on local regulation and the requirements of neighbours of the plant and so on.”
The steps for dryer emission control begin with the SABA biological treatment system which cleans dryer gases with a trickling filter medium.
“Our biological systems are unique in the market and we have made 10 installations to date,” said Mr Köck. “The dryer fumes go to treating filters with a large surface area to wash the formaldehyde into the water system. We then treat the water biologically to remove the formaldehyde and that water can be reused – this is again an almost-closedloop solution.”
Then there is pre-separation and biological treatment which is similar to SABA but has improved dust and fibre separation by a Venturi system and cyclones.
The WESP plus biological treatment produces the BIOSENA system, which combines SABA and SENA.
WESP plus biological activation is called the SENA or the SEKA, with biological treatment without the trickling filter medium.
Finally there is the scrubber, which is purely a washing system.
Some mills in particularly sensitive areas may also be required to install a depluming system which also removes the steam from the exhaust stream, making it virtually, or sometimes totally, invisible.
For this, Scheuch offers the WESP depluming system SEKA. Water is sprayed into the system to collect dust and particulate matter. The steam plume is almost completely removed by mixing the gas, prior to clean gas discharge, with the heated air from specially-designed pipe bundles.
For cleaning press fumes, Scheuch offers the SAP system. This is a waterbased system and the water has to be treated to avoid nozzle blockages or buildup in the ducting. Using a wet system also reduces fire risk as long as build-up of fibre or dust in the ducting is avoided.
“We work closely with Siempelkamp and Dieffenbacher in the design of the press hood,” said Mr Köck.
Extraction also takes place from the sides of the press where a lot of fumes, dust and fibres are expelled. If the dust and fibre get into the press mechanism, it not only represents a fire hazard, but also leads to increased energy consumption.
“To avoid this, we use suction hoods on the sides of the press, particularly at the infeed and outfeed, and have specific designs for particleboard, thin MDF, thick MDF – they are all different,” said the general manager. Recent projects for Scheuch’s systems include Langboard Inc in Willacoochee, US, which ordered a SABA system; Masonite Corporation in Laurel, US (SABA); Yildiz Sunta MDF, Turkey (SEKA); Starwood Orman AS, Turkey (SEKA); Egger, Brilon, Germany (SAP); and Greenply Industries, India, which ordered a de-dusting system.
This Greenply project was for the first continuous press to be installed in India.
In a very real sense, heightened awareness of environmental and energy conservation issues have played right into the hands of Scheuch since its first tentative steps in 1964 and must surely have contributed to the firm’s rapid and continuous growth in turnover and staffing levels.
The kind of equipment that Scheuch supplies is an extra cost to a panel mill and does not directly contribute to it producing any more product, but regulations in most countries require this equipment if the panel mill is to stay in production at all.
On the plus side, products such as the company’s sifter are designed to improve product quality and output efficiency and there is also the potential to save energy, which would otherwise be lost to the atmosphere with the polluting content of an untreated exhaust stream.