Profession digester operator

Digester operators, or cooks, cook wood chips with soda ash or acid to separate the wood pulp from unwanted constituents. They test the resulting solution.

Personality Type

• Realistic / Conventional

Knowledge

• Types of paper

  The different criteria used to determine differences in paper types such as coarseness and thickness, and the different fabrication methods and wood types from which the types of paper stem.

• Quality standards

  The national and international requirements, specifications and guidelines to ensure that products, services and processes are of good quality and fit for purpose.

• Types of pulp

  Kinds of pulp are distinguished based on their fibre type and the specific chemical processes through which they were created.

• Types of digesters

  This includes the stationary and rotary steam digesters, which cook wood chips in an acid solution to make pulp for use in the manufacture of paper.

Skills

• Supply machine

  Ensure the machine is fed the necessary and adequate materials and control the placement or automatic feed and retrieval of work pieces in the machines or machine tools on the production line.

• Monitor automated machines

  Continuously check up on the automated machine's set-up and execution or make regular control rounds. If necessary, record and interpret data on the operating conditions of installations and equipment in order to identify abnormalities.

• Concentrate pulp slurry

  Measure the weight and concentration of the pulp slurry for further processing and storage by using disk filters and calculating slurry density with specific formulas.

• Wear appropriate protective gear

  Wear relevant and necessary protective gear, such as protective goggles or other eye protection, hard hats, safety gloves.

• Monitor pulp quality

  Avoid lesser quality and lower grades of recycled paper and pulp by keeping an eye open for stickies, plastics, colour, unbleached fibres, brightness, and dirt.

• Operate digester machine

  Add cooking chemicals and steam to dissolve lignin and separate the plant fibres, breaking down wood chips to recover pulp after a bleaching and drying process.

• Wash fibres

  Remove the chemical solution of the digesting process, making paper pulp soft and fibrous.

• Work safely with machines

  Check and safely operate machines and equipment required for your work according to manuals and instructions.

• Troubleshoot

  Identify operating problems, decide what to do about it and report accordingly.

• Set up the controller of a machine

  Set up and give commands to a machine by dispatching the appropriate data and input into the (computer) controller corresponding with the desired processed product.

Optional knowledge and skills

Source: Sisyphus ODB