Energy saving in papermaking by application of hybrid calcium carbonate

Hybrid calcium carbonate (HCC) is prepared by pre-flocculating calcium oxide and ground calcium carbonate (GCC) with ionic polymers, and by injecting carbon dioxide to the pre-flocculated flocs until termination of the reaction at neutral pH. When used in papermaking, HCC gave higher bulk, higher stiffness, and higher tensile strength than GCC did. Furthermore, when higher wet pressing pressure was applied to the paper containing HCC, higher solid content was achieved with still better stiffness, smoothness, and tensile strength in comparison with the paper containing GCC. Actually, very high bulk of the HCC containing paper was compromisingly reduced to obtain high solid content by applying higher wet pressing pressure. Higher solid content achieved by combination of HCC technology and higher wet pressing pressure resulted in paper drying energy savings of more than 10%, while a high quality of all the essential printing paper properties was maintained. Drying energy savings may contribute to greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction and lowering of the paper production cost.

Wet pressing and product quality: Review of previous pilot machine trials

The purpose of wet pressing is to remove water by mechanical means to consolidate the web and minimize the energy expended in the dryer section. In this process, paper is compacted and densified to degrees that impact end-use performance. Average density is increased by pressing, which has implications for grades where stiffness is important. The z-direction density gradients can affect printing and converting. Lastly, pressing affects surface quality of paper and its response to printing. Broadly speaking, the final press nip dominates the paper surface roughness and the early press nips affect printing performance.

Stages of technological process of high anisotropy formation of magnetic properties under «dry» pressing of powder products

The article proposes the description of technological production process of anisotropic products from powders of high materials which provides powders preparation and products made of them. It has been shown that the main drawback of «wet» pressing technology is low accuracy at dosing wet charge. To eliminate warping and cracking of briquettes obtained by «wet» pressing during the sintering, they are subjected to air drying at room temperature within 48-72 hours. However, the percentage of product failure due to mechanical and magnetic characteristics remains high. Practically all the drawbacks of «wet» pressing can be eliminated by reverse to dry powder pressing, which allows to obtain low mass magnets without additional final finishing machining, to avoid warping and cracking of the product, and to reduce sintering time. Nevertheless, under the dry powder pressing the magnetic characteristics of products are significantly lower than under the wet pressing. When working with disperse materials, a promising direction is to converse them into fluidized state. To obtain the fluidized state of powder materials, vibrational technologies are used, involving the transfer of a wide range of energy to the powder material, i.e. mechanical, acoustic, electric and magnetic energy.

Impact of modified industrial wet pressing on the quantity and quality of Nile perch oil extracted from the viscera.

Global fish oil production is between 1 to 1.25 million tones and primarily exploiting fatty fish such as menhaden, herring, pilchards, anchovy, and sardine among others. The main producing countries include Japan, USA, Chile and Peru. Yet, fish oil from developing countries end up as bio waste since only the flesh is utilized. This paper discusses a simple approach for utilizing the fish bio waste to produce oil andhow the oil quality and quantityis impacted by the extraction process. The visceral organs were collected from fish filleting factory and markets in Kisumu town and oil extracted by modified wet pressing method adopted from Blight and Dyer (1959). The effect of temperature and serial washing on the oil quality and quantity was assessed from extraction temperatures at800C, 900C, 950C and 970C, while employing three serial washing using distilled water and pineapple juice. The quality of the oil produced was then determined based on the proportion of omega -3, vitamin A and E, peroxide value, iodine value and free fatty acids. Statistical analysis was conducted using R-data analysis software at P<0.05 and ANOVA to determine significance. Results indicate that maximum extraction efficiency was achieved at 800C for 30 minutes where 157.66g of oil was extracted, when compared to 156.56g at 90ºC,156.49g at 95ºC,155.84g at 97ºC from a tissues of 171.25gin each case. It was concluded that the temperature manipulation procedures as per this study was reliable to produce maximum yield and can be adopted by oil producing plants. The study targets to utilize fish-biowaste which is dumped in aquatic systems that depletes dissolved oxygen levels in such ecosystems.

Dewatering of foam-laid and water-laid structures and the formed web properties

The use of aqueous foams as a carrier fluid for pulp fibers instead of water has re-emerged in the paper and board industry in recent years. In foam forming, a surfactant is needed to reduce the surface tension of the carrier liquid and to create foam as a process fluid and flowing medium. This presents the following questions: (1) How do the water forming and foam forming processes differ? (2) How do the obtained wet/dry fibre sheets differ after forming and after wet pressing? (3) Which differences in the process behavior and sheet properties are due to the surfactant, and which are due to the presence of air bubbles in the flowing medium? The answers to these questions were sought by using an experimental academic approach and by applying a special dynamic vacuum assisted sheet former. Although foams are much more viscous than water, dewatering times were found to be approximately equal in water and foam forming at higher vacuum levels. The hydrodynamic resistance of sheet was approximately constant during water forming, while in foam forming resistance was initially even smaller than in water forming but it increased with time, being substantially higher at the end of the forming process. In certain cases, surfactant alone was found to have a similar, albeit often lower, effect on the sheet properties of foam. Surfactant improved sheet dryness (both after forming and wet pressing), lowered density, and lowered strength properties also in water forming. Foam, on the other hand, had a crucial effect particularly on certain structural properties such as formation and porosity. The difference between water and foam-laid sheets typically reduced in line with higher wet pressing pressure. This suggests that the role of surface tension and foam bubbles in controlling interfiber contact is overridden by wet pressing pressure. Thus applying foam as a carrier fluid has characteristic effects both on the papermaking process and the end product properties. The main features of foam forming can be explained by the chemical effects caused by the surfactant, and the structural effects caused by the foam bubbles. Graphic abstract

Upscaling of foam forming technology for pilot scale

The need for production cost savings and changes in the global paper and board industry during recent years have been constants. Changes in the global paper and board industry during past years have increased the need for more cost-efficient processes and production technologies. It is known that in paper and board production, foam typically leads to problems in the process rather than improvements in production efficiency. Foam forming technology, where foam is used as a carrier phase and a flowing medium, exploits the properties of dispersive foam. In this study, the possibility of applying foam forming technology to paper applications was investigated using a pilot scale paper forming environment modified for foam forming from conventional water forming. According to the results, the shape of jet-to-wire ratios was the same in both forming methods, but in the case of foam forming, the achieved scale of jet-to-wire ratio and MD/CD-ratio were wider and not behaving sensitively to shear changes in the forming section as a water forming process would. This kind of behavior would be beneficial when upscaling foam technology to the production scale. The dryness results after the forming section indicated the improvement in dewatering, especially when foam density was at the lowest level (i.e., air content was at the highest level). In addition, the dryness results after the pressing section indicated a faster increase in the dryness level as a function of foam density, with all density levels compared to the corresponding water formed sheets. According to the study, the bonding level of water- and foam-laid structures were at the same level when the highest wet pressing value was applied. The results of the study show that the strength loss often associated with foam forming can be compensated for successfully through wet pressing.

Effects of Wet-Pressing and Cross-Linking on the Tensile Properties of Carbon Nanotube Fibers

To increase the strength of carbon nanotube (CNT) fibers (CNTFs), the mean size of voids between bundles of CNTs was reduced by wet-pressing, and the CNTs were cross-linked. Separate and simultaneous physical (roller pressing) and chemical methods (cross-linking) were tested to confirm each method’s effects on the CNTF strength. By reducing the fraction of pores, roller pressing decreased the cross-sectional area from 160 μm2 to 66 μm2 and increased the average load-at-break from 2.83 ± 0.25 cN to 4.41 ± 0.16 cN. Simultaneous injection of crosslinker and roller pressing augmented the cross-linking effect by increasing the infiltration of the crosslinker solution into the CNTF, so the specific strength increased from 0.40 ± 0.05 N/tex to 0.67 ± 0.04 N/tex. To increase the strength by cross-linking, it was necessary that the size of the pores inside the CNTF were reduced, and the infiltration of the solution was increased. These results suggest that combined physical and chemical treatment is effective to increase the strength of CNTFs.