About BLRBAC

Black Liquor Recovery Boiler Advisory Committee

The BLRBAC is a “Trade Association” that exists for the purpose of sharing knowledge and generating and maintaining guidelines to help facilitate the safe, reliable operation of Black Liquor Recovery Boilers.

Fall meeting once again has been reverted back to virtual.

The Executive committee met yesterday to consider the current  and the near future outlook concerning the Covid infection rate.  Also, we took a poll of the most of the larger member companies that send participants to BLRBAC meetings.  Most of the member companies are putting more and more restrictions on how their employees travel and interact with each other.  They have  restricted travel to Covid “hot spots”, required wearing masks in public settings, maintaining social distancing, eliminated the visitation of contractors and suppliers to mill sites, and quarantining when exposed to someone who is either testing for the virus or has tested positive.  The trend is moving toward the elimination of “unnecessary travel” again.  Atlanta has been labelled a “hot spot” for Covid infections, which would exclude it from some of the member companies from sending participants.  I know several BLRBAC members have told me they have been vaccinated, but we think that member companies themselves may be the one to restrict them from coming to large meetings like BLRBAC. 

Given that, the Executive Committee expects the turnout to the Fall meeting to be low, and we have concerns for the safety of our members.  Because of this we are changing the Fall meeting from an in person meeting to a virtual meeting.  We are planning to hold a virtual session of the ESP subcommittee open meeting where they review the ESP incidents.  We will also do a Main Committee meeting that will include the Executive Committee report, Treasury report, Secretary report, new members report, and the next meeting report. 

As many of the members that we polled have said, and I believed it myself, one of the greatest benefits to the BLRBAC meetings are all of the personal interactions.  We get to meet people that we have known for 10-20 years.  We also get to meet the new members.  Before the Pandemic the number of participants in BLRBAC meetings was steadily increasing.  We were approaching 270-290 people per meeting. 

There is a lot of planning that goes into these meetings.  We started planning the Fall meeting in the month of June.  In June the pandemic looked as though it was over.  With that information, we started planning for an in person meeting.  Infection rates started picking up in late July, maybe due to the 4^th of July get togethers.  They have not slowed down and there is no way to predict what it would be like in October.  We know that some people make flight arrangements and other travel plans around this meeting.  We wanted to give everyone enough time to change those.

So that being said we know several people have registered already.  That will be refunded.  The new virtual registration fee will be $150 for the Fall meeting and will be in the new registration link.  The old link has been taken down.  We are planning for a virtual open ESP Committee meeting and Main Committee meeting on October 6^th.  The new virtual meeting registration is as follows:

https://attendesource.com/profile/form/index.cfm?PKformID=0x123368abcd

If you registered for the in person meeting you will be refunded and will need to register again. Thanks for your understanding.

Upcoming Events

BLRBAC Spring 2022 Meeting	April 4-6, 2022
BLRBAC Fall 2022 Meeting	October 2-6, 2022