"So what did we get for the money?" Note: Emails are organized in the order received, with first received at the top. Dear Jim, Having been one to try to sell new product and production method ideas... I have to say that RnD is not actually led/decided by RnD people. It is ultimately controlled by sales and marketing and or accountants and/or investment and as such you are competing with investments beyond pulp and paper... ...even politicians love telling us what we should do...like we haven't already been there. Anyway, speed of innovation is also v tricky for pulp and paper...people are innovating in ICT over 2 -14 day period...how are you gonna compete with that? It is only when you are decoupled from this and set your sights high that you start to break free of the daily dilemma that demands you focus and work within your constraints to offer something interesting albeit marginal...products that have been around for a long time tend to create reputations...e.g. 'wool' is at a similar RnD place to pulp and paper and the good wool suffers from bad wool [itchy, coarse looking stuff]...your left looking to relabel it as something else as the general brand is damaged... if everyone can agree/can be bothered. Anyway packaging and tissues to some degree are relatively new products...currently we "write" [oldest?], "wrap" [old-ish...i include boxes here] and "wipe" [almost old] with fibre products [this list isn't exhaustive]... what next?...i think you want a whole new category and as such will need to think at this abstracted level of what people do with it in their daily lives. Yesterday I drove past some trucks and machines laying a road...what a tedious slow process [looked like 6m/hr to me]...can we make a road [at 60km/h] with reams of paper and so we all drive on it every day?.. currently valued at over $1million AUD per km? depending on surface, etc. Pulp and paper is potentially a very sustainable product and business. Cheers, Richard Helmer CSIRO Australia *** Hi Jim; Your observations, provocations and fulminations on the R&D wasteland in the P&P industry probably never will reach the right "ears" - industry management only listens to itself - but are totally appropriate! Millions of research dollars in the past 20 years were diverted from investigative "research" into tasks like dioxin analysis, sheet coatings and achieving ISO certifications - these had their own consultant and supplier beneficiaries - to the extent that most "bright" researchers soon sought more challenging work in other industries, some probably in the financial industry! Successful research leaders typically are enlightened, inspiring, courageous, progressive and competitive (Matt Ridley's excellent biography; Francis Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic Code first published in June 2006 by Harper-Collins is a great read.) but I've rarely encountered managers with these traits at any level in the NA pulp and paper industry and especially not in any research directing capacity. We always chuckled at the notion of fresh, highly motivated, research-oriented science graduates from Stanford and MIT excitedly telling each other: "Can't wait to get work in the pulp and paper industry!" Valuable research in our industry always came from Europe and from the Pulp and Paper Research Institute of Canada, but you're right about how incremental it is. Look how glacial development of a safer/better liquor recovery process has been over the past 30 years. Speaking of progress, has anything come out of your 50% lighter construction initiative? Feedback on my preliminary analysis of the benefits of aluminum alloy dryers was limited, to be polite about it. I 'm curious what your sense is of how the forum will evolve. Enjoy the Fall season. Dave Bennett Mahwah, New Jersey USA --- David, thanks for your thoughts. The lightweight machine project, if it is like any nascent idea I have been involved with before, will start slowly, and grow. When it looks like we have something, someone will come along and take the credit. That's OK by me, I am trying to get something done, not build monuments (especially heavy ones!). I am giving a lecture on it at Georgia Tech on 21 Oct 09. Ronald Reagan and many others have said "it is amazing what you can do when you don't care who gets the credit. Anyone wanting to join the lightweight machine project, please go to http://papermachine2025.ning.com/. Jim *** You're right. Almost nothing. The last breakthrough was probably carbonless carbon paper about 1971. A real breakthrough would be making paper without as much water, since it starts out as 99.5% water and ends up about 5%. All the paper machine does is expend energy to eliminate water, in a sense. But I have been reading about this "need" for at least 35 years. Regards, Bob Fritz Independence, Ohio USA --- Bob, re: water--I have been asking for a while: why can't we make paper with sea water? It has to just be a matter of chemistry. Jim *** Last week you talked about lab safety in paper mills. I have a story about recausticizing area safety. I know of two different cases where an open manway in the top of a causticizer almost cost personnel their legs. One occurred at a mill in South Georgia. The mechanic was working on the agitator gear box on top of the causticizer and stepped back, stepping through the open manway in the top of the unit. He had on high top lace up boots, heavy pants and socks. His leg went into the hot liquor mix almost up to his knee before he could catch. His leg was severly damaged from the boot top up to the point where the liquor didn't reach. He almost lost the leg and did miss work for over 6 months. Another was a supervisor on top of a causticizer in a North Florida mill. He was looking over a maintenance problem and did as above, stepped back and into the open manway on top of the causticizer. Again his leg was severly damaged by the hot chemical. He also almost lost the lower part of the leg but did recover to have a badly scarred leg. The liquid in the causticizer is a mixture of sodium hydroxide, sodium sulfide, calcium hydroxide and are very corrosive at almost any temperature, much less the 200 degrees plus in these units. I have been into a lot of mills over my career and in most of them I found the manway covers either missing or not over the top manway in causticizers. I continued to preach to those mills the unsafe condition that this can have on personnel. Sorry to be the bearer of such news, but this is important. How easily accidents like this can happen and they don't have to. Tommy Surles Pensacola, Florida USA ### Have a comment? Send your email to jthompson@taii.com. Unless you tell us otherwise, we will assume we can use your name if we publish your letter.