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“We are growing extremely fast, it’s hotting up”

Published Jan 22, 2010

These are busy days for the KTH alumni Erik Odén, who is at present the Managing Director of Mantex. This is not at all strange because the company sells products to a market that turns over thousands of billions of Euros every year throughout the world. An industry that still has a few problems remaining to sort out on the way towards perfect production, and where Mantex is sitting on solutions to some of these problems.

Mantex works with two product families. The first one, Mantex Desktop, comprises technology which can read off the amount of water and impurities in samples of biomass. The product is a winner for the paper industry for example, which handles large amounts of biomass. In all stages of the production process – from wood-chips via wood pulp to paper - it is important to keep a watchful eye on the dry content of the biomass. In addition, the paper mills incur considerable costs for stoppages caused by impurities.

“I have not spoken to a single paper mill that has not had stoppages due to, for example, stones having crept in among the raw materials. The other day I spoke for example to a paper mill in one of our neighbouring countries that had to close down its production because of a few pieces of metal. This amounted to losses of NOK 6 million,” says Eric Odén.

In addition to paper mills, energy companies and saw mills pay for dry weight, and no company wants to pay out extra money for water and impurities. Mantex Desktop enables the delivery of biomass – timber, cotton, recycled fibre, wood chips, pellets, cereals etc. – to be measured quickly and carefully on arrival.

Erik Odén adds that the market for the processing of forestry raw materials only is gigantic. Yes, every tenth Swedish crown comes from the forestry industry.

Mantex desktop
Here is Mantex Desktop. According to Erik Odén, Managing Director of Mantex, the company has invested quite a lot of money on product design.

Product family number two, Mantex Flow, also measures the dry content and incidence of non-organic impurities. This is carried out on all biomass, unlike Mantex Desktop, during transport on a conveyor belt, which is perfect for energy recovery or process optimisation.

“This means for example that a combustion facility can adjust its boiler perfectly to achieve the best combustion in relation to moisture content, something which is a challenge today. The advantages include greater energy recovery and reduced emissions,” says Erik Odén.

There are several examples of energy gains according to Erik Odén. The forestry industry group Holmen are of the opinion that the moisture sensor can contribute by allowing the production of more energy-efficient pulp. Around 5% more efficient, to be more exact. Considering the fact that the major mechanical paper mills consume around 1% of Sweden’s electricity production per plant, it can easily be seen that there is a significant energy saving to be gained.

“If you have perfect control of the raw material, wood chips, you can mix the constituent parts in chemical paper mills with greater precision and produce more paper pulp using less chemicals,” says Erik Odén.
Initially it was the measurement of human tissue which formed the basis of the radiological technology (a form of x-ray) which Mantex uses today in their products. This indicates therefore the importance of cross-fertilisation between different areas of research and knowledge transfer between subject areas and what they can contribute.

There is no doubt that so far Mantex has been successful with its two product families. The company was recently awarded the prize “Swedish Clean tech Company of the Year”.

“We are growing extremely fast, things are really hotting up, says Erik Odén.

For more information, contact Erik Odén at erik.oden@mantex.se or ring 08 - 477 04 81.

Peter Larsson

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Belongs to: About KTH
Last changed: Jan 22, 2010