Lightning protection for the pulp and paper industry

The pulp and paper industry has joined other major industries in a conversion to fully automated process control systems. Many of these plants are changing the older process controls to the new, more sophisticated, and very sensitive microelectronic control systems. With the advent of these changes lightning induced activity (or transients) has become more and more of a problem. With each new generation of equipment, the severity and scope of these problems increases. In many cases protection technology has lagged behind control equipment development, but in most cases it is the equipment designers that lag behind in the understanding of protection. That is, what type of protection to use, and where to use it. The authors discuss the impacts of lightning on various parts of a pulp and paper mill including the electrical systems. The status of protection system technology in the areas of lightning strike protection, power line surge prevention, transient protection and grounding technology, are discussed.