MILL OPERATIONS

Consolidated Papers Inc., Wisconsin Rapids, Wis., has ordered a laser guided AGV from Mentor AGVS to transport 35 ton paper rolls. The AGV will be North America's first laser guided vehicle to operate using 4-wheel independent steering.

Roosevelt Paper Co., Philadelphia, Pa., has ordered an RDC 2060 winder and a RSH-72 unwind from A&F Corp. The winder face is 95 in. and rewind diameter is 60 in., and the operating speed is 6,000 fpm. The unwind will be handling 72 in. rolls. In addition, the winder will also have PLC/PC controls.

Crown Vantage Inc., St. Francisville, La., has started up its recently converted fresh-air steam generator. The unit had been converted from a gas turbine heat exhaust-fired unit after Crown Vantage renegotiated its power purchase deal from a local utility. Instead of retiring the older generator, Crown Vantage contracted with Babcock & Wilcox Power Generation Group for the conversion in order to keep the steam production required for various papermaking processes.

Domtar Packaging, Toronto, Ont., has ordered couch roll double doctors from James Ross Ltd.

For the approach flow system on the No. 4 paper machine at its Wauna mill in Clatskanie, Ore., James River Corp. has ordered a vertical pressure screen with a C-bar slotted screen basket from Voith Sulzer.

Champion International Corp.'s Sheldon, Texas, mill has purchased a HiPAC continuous decoater from Eimco Process Equipment. The media cleaner will be retrofitted on an existing 6-ft-dia x 8-ft-face lime mud precoat filter. It is designed to improve lime mud filtration capacity, reducing discharge cake moisture and lime kiln fuel consumption.

At its deinking mill that recycles mixed office waste (MOW) in Putney, Vt., Putney Paper has installed a Vincent VP-16 screw press that is fed sludge from a belt press. A press cake moisture of 55% has been achieved, improving waste disposal.

U.S. Paper Converters, Appleton, Wis., has ordered an RDC 2472 winder and unwind from A&F Corp. The winder face is 136 in. and the operating speed is 7,000 fpm. The heavy duty shaftless unwind will be handling 72 in. rolls.

Willamette Industries Inc., Kingsport, Tenn., has ordered a patented chip thickness screening system from Acrowood. Two Acrowood DiamondRoll VIRO chip thickness screens and a dual drive suspended screen will separate overthick chips and fines. Size reduction equipment was not included in the system.

Buckeye Paper Co., Perry, Fla., has ordered a complete chip thickness screening and processing system from Beloit's Rader Cos. Div. The system includes an RDS scalping screen, a Model 1424 DynaGage II bar screen, a Model 80/300 Dyna Yield II chip conditioner, and a Model 40 air density separator (ADS).

Appleton Papers Inc., Newton Falls, N.Y., has ordered couch roll double doctors from James Ross Ltd.

Union Camp Corp., Franklin, Va., has ordered material handling equipment from Voith Sulzer. The new equipment consists of an upender, roll splitter, and a conveyor for supplying the No. 4 paper machine's dry end pulper.

Weyerhaeuser Corp., Grand Prairie, Alta., has purchased a 5060 DiamondRoll from Acrowood to use after a series of rotary screens for pins recovery.

For its Red Rock, Ont., mill, Domtar Packaging Ltd. has purchased a Fiberizer coarse screen and three-stage vertical pressure screen system with patented C-bar slotted screen baskets from Voith Sulzer. The screens will be installed in the mill's secondary fiber processing plant.

Weyerhaeuser Corp., Valliant, Okla., has ordered a second Rader chip thickness screening and processing line from Beloit's Rader Cos. Div. after a successful startup of the first line last year. The equipment includes a Model 1424 DynaGage II bar screen, a Model 80/300 DynaYield II chip conditioner, and a Model 40 ADS. In addition, Weyerhaeuser has ordered a Honeywell-Measurex MXOpen AutoFlow CD profiling system for the No. 1 paper machine at the Valiant mill.

Florida Coast Paper Co., Port St. Joe, Fla., has ordered couch roll double doctors from James Ross Ltd.

For its bleached kraft mill in Catawba, S.C., Bowater Inc. has ordered a two-line thickness screening system by Acrowood to install prior to its 10 batch digesters. Each of the two screening lines will include a disc scalper, two Model 50144 DiamondRoll primary thickness screens placed one after the other, a Model 7222 air density separator to process the overs before they are sent into a Model 3672 chip cracker, and a Model 90108 DiamondRoll fines screen fit with the raised roll feature to process fines.

For its Campti, La., mill, Willamette Industries has ordered a new OCC system from Voith Sulzer. The system includes Voith Sulzer's pulping, detrashing, coarse and fine screening, heavy and lightweight cleaning, fractionating, clarification, and rejects handling equipment. Patented C-bar screen baskets and L5 and LT3 cleaners will provide high containment removal efficiency.

Brewton Chips, Hodge, La., has purchased a 116 in., 12-knife, horizontal feed, bottom discharge chipper from Acrowood. The chipper comes with a stainless steel slot and end liners and includes a new side access spout door for easy access to the side anvil.

At Newsprint South Inc., Grenada, Miss., the installation of an UltraRock ceramic cover from Beloit Manhattan has increased paper machine speed from 4,100 fpm to 4,350 fpm. The mill had replaced the granite cover on its TriNip center press after CD moisture profile, sheet release, and edge flipping problems became unmanageable. In addition to the speed improvement, the UltraRock cover eliminated the problems caused by the granite cover.

Mead Corp., Chillicothe, Ohio, has ordered a Model 40/150 DynaYield II chip conditioner from Beloit's Rader Cos. Div.

Shotton Paper plc, Shotton, Wales, U.K., has ordered an integrated manufacturing execution system (MES) from ABB. With the new system, Shotton will be able to more efficiently manage its manufacturing process from incoming orders to customer delivery. With production of 450,000 tpy, Shotton Paper is the largest newsprint producer in the U.K.

Rolland Paper, St. Jerome, Que., has received couch roll double doctors from James Ross Ltd.

For its Perawang mill on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, PT Indah Kiat Pulp and Paper has ordered a $50 million recovery boiler from Kvaerner Pulping Oy of Finland. With a capacity of 3,300 tons of dry solids per day, the recovery boiler is among the largest in the world. Installation of the boiler will begin at the end of 1998.

Aceradios Cementos dos Bio, Chile, has ordered a 4211 slant disc chipper from Acrowood. The chipper has a horizontal feed, bottom discharge configuration.

Yuen Foong Yu Paper Mfg. Co. Ltd., Kaohsiung, Taiwan, R.O.C., has purchased 64 New Generation linear brush showers from James Ross Ltd. for its new 5.7 m, No. 21 paper machine.

To process eucalyptus chips, Tohoku Seishi, a kraft mill in Akita, Japan, is installing an Acrowood chip thickness screening system before its continuous digester. All portions of the screening system that come into contact with the chips are either composed of or clad by stainless steel to resist corrosion by the acidic eucalyptus resin.

To enhance product quality and cost competitiveness at its Jesup, Ga., specialty pulp mill, Rayonier Inc. has announced a $12 million investment program. The mill plans to decrease product variability through automation and process control technology.

Beloit's R&D lab solves persistent printing problem

To determine the cause, researchers at the Beloit Rockton Research Center laboratory collected samples of LWC and rawstock from a variety of sources. The researchers then carried out a series of coating, calendering, and printing trials.

"There were very few conclusive studies about this problem because it was largely considered a printing effect," explains Daniel Sze, manager of paper technology for the Rockton Research Center. "But what we did was consider the possibility that fluting problems could, in fact, be alleviated in the production of the paper."

Researchers for the Beloit study set out to discover whether or not the fluting tendency was inherent in all LWC sheets, and, if not, to discover the major contributing factors to the problem. To determine the answers, the lab measured the fluting response of the test sheets under different papermaking and printing conditions. A special laser topographic analyzer was designed and built to precisely measure the wavelength and magnitude of the flutes. In addition, a series of physical tests were conducted to further examine the relationships between fluting tendencies and the specific properties of each sample.

Two basic conclusions were drawn by the Beloit study. The first was that all LWC sheets exhibited some degree of fluting when ink coverage was heavy. The second conclusion was that the wavelength of the flutes was a function of basis weight.

While all sheets displayed fluting tendencies to one degree or another, the magnitude of the flutes varied greatly between different samples. The most significant factor contributing to this difference was the porosity of the coating, with a clear correlation demonstrated between surface ink absorption and fluting wave intensity. Further analysis revealed that the level of calcium carbonate in the coating color had a significant impact on coating porosity.

In the end, researchers determined that fluting wave intensity is primarily a function of the coating formulation. "The key to controlling fluting in LWC grades subjected to heavy ink coverage is using less absorbent coatings," explains Sze. "By determining that fluting is a problem that can be controlled, mills can now adjust coating formulas to suit their customers' specific needs. This should alleviate a great deal of the fluting problems that printers face."