LINCOLN – Eastern Paper’s Lincoln mill will be the first commercial business in the country to test a new process designed by a Scarborough company to reduce energy and improve the environment.

The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded a $369,661 grant to Kady International of Scarborough to demonstrate its new Kady Bio-Lysis System to reduce electric costs at the Lincoln mill’s wastewater treatment plant. The two companies are matching the grant with $387,252. Maine’s Department of Economic and Community Development will administer the grant.

“The DOE is extremely pleased to be involved in a project like this that saves energy, increases productivity and improves our environment all at the same time,” Scott Richlen, the director of the Office of Industrial Technologies for the U.S. Department of Energy, said last week.

Richlen said the Lincoln mill would be the first in the country to try the new process for commercial use. He said it was good to see a company such as Eastern Pulp and Paper Corp., the mill’s parent company, take an interest in trying new technology. He described Kady International as a solid Maine company.

“We have reached the point where it is time to put this out and see how it does,” said Richlen of Kady’s new process. “Now we will find out how well it operates under actual commercial conditions.

“If it works, hopefully we will see a lot of other pulp and paper plants adopt it,” said the DOE official.

David Van Wie, the director of the Maine Department of Environmental Protection’s Bureau of Land and Water, said the project provided a great opportunity to see whether the environment could be improved.

“We are happy the Lincoln paper company is working to be innovative,” Van Wie said last week. “This technology has some promise for having a benefit on the environment.

“The DEP is trying to find ways to gain environmental benefits through energy efficiency,” Van Wie continued. “We recognize that our energy sector is a major contributor to our environmental issues, so anything that reduces energy use is good for the environment as well. We hope it works.”

Joseph Torras, Eastern’s chairman and chief executive officer, said Friday the new technology was just one more example of the company’s efforts to be environmentally progressive.

Equipment for the new process will be installed in the mill’s wastewater treatment plant in August, and it is expected to be operating by September.

“This will be our first commercial field test,” Kent A. Peterson, president of Kady International, said Friday.

Peterson said the new process developed by his company breaks the secondary waste down into smaller pieces, which requires less aeration and uses less electricity to treat the waste. He said no chemicals are used in the process. A high-speed dispersion or mixing device is used to break the waste particles down into smaller pieces.

Peterson said about 70 percent of the electricity used in wastewater treatment plants is to operate mixers and blowers to supply aeration. Air is needed to keep alive the bacteria, which feed on the waste.

By mechanically breaking the waste into smaller pieces, more of it is consumed by the bacteria, he said.

“If the particles are reduced mechanically, then less air is required to maintain the biology and therefore less electricity is used in the process,” said the Kady official.

Peterson said the primary objective of using the new process at the Lincoln mill’s treatment plant is to lower the company’s electrical costs. He estimates the mill will cut its electricity costs by between 10 and 25 percent. Another benefit is that the new process results in less sludge being produced, which means the Lincoln mill will have less to dispose of.

Doug Walsh, Eastern’s vice president of operations, said the company spends several hundred thousand dollars a year in electricity costs to operate its wastewater treatment plant at the Lincoln mill.

“Obviously energy costs are a primary concern to a business like ours,” he said. “In order to be successful, we need to look for every opportunity to continually save money to be competitive in a tough business environment.”

Walsh said the project was the latest in Eastern’s history of being at the forefront of innovative technologies in the pulp and paper industry.

“We are very excited about the potential the project has not only to reduce energy costs, but also to further improve our environmental performance way beyond what is already required for regulatory compliance,” he said.

“It further demonstrates our commitment to continuous environmental improvement,” Walsh said.