Kemira’s tissue strategy is to work closely with the customer in addressing their needs with a grade-specifi c focus, according to Clayton Campbell, Global Business Development Manager, Tissue & Specialties.
Kemira’s new Tissue & Specialties customer segment is customer needs oriented, providing a broad offering for water and fiber management.
The key process areas in tissue manufacturing are crepe control, wet end management, fiber and water quality management. Kemira’s strength, which covers all these processes, is on the fiberwater management chemistry interface. This is easily understood, considering that it takes approximately 50 tons of water to manufacture one ton of tissue.
Campbell reminds that suppliers need to be able to offer tissue manufacturers real added value if they want to succeed. Tissue manufacturers don’t want to have to teach the supplier about the process and their tissue grades; they need to have the expertise required from the start.
“Our customer-oriented approach is founded on three key cornerstones: gradespecific focus and broad application expertise in the field, the ability to optimize the paper machine’s key processes and our experience in diagnostics and interpreting the measurement data that can be collected,” says Campbell.
“We have developed and continue to develop specialty technologies specific to tissue production needs, and we draw on Kemira’s global competences and technological
know-how in other sectors of pulp and paper manufacturing.”
Water and fiber management – a key issue
In the example of wet end process management for a recycle towel grade, the process fiber and water chemistry can vary significantly and play a key role in interactions with process chemical additives. It is important to understand the cause-and-effect
relationships.
In the case of obtaining the desired wet and dry tensile sheet strength properties, wet and dry strength chemical additives are typically employed in the wet end of the process. A multitude of process fiber and water chemistry variables, such as process charge, fines loading, pH, oxidation-reduction state and other chemical additives, can have a dramatic effect on the strength additive performance efficiency.
Optimizing processes
Optimizing wet and dry strength performance efficiency is an area where Kemira itself is particularly strong. The aim is to ensure that the least amount of costly strength additives is utilized to obtain the tensile strength target.
“Although chemicals are essential for enhancing furnish properties, it does not make sense to use any more of them than needed.”
The same approach applies to optimizing creping performance. Understanding and optimizing the process variable interrelationships can benefit the overall productivity, and Kemira has a number of approaches and skills to offer in helping manufacturers achieve what they want here.
“Optimizing the creping process is where our customers can see some of the largest production gains. This can be accomplished by impacting such areas as increasing key sheet properties, extending doctor blade life and providing a more uniform cross and machine directional sheet profile.”
Optimization is not just about optimizing the paper machine; the focus needs to be on optimizing the specific grade of tissue on that machine. The information management approach that Kemira developed enables process measurement data to be more effectively used to generate useful information quickly and thus help improve performance speedily as well.
Highly developed information management
“Information management and related diagnostic tools enhance our technology
offering to our customers. It plays a vital role in problem solving and optimizing the process that allows for significant manufacturing cost savings. This helps everyone identify the key variables at work and produce models for seeing how things should work and monitoring the success of development projects – all with our feet
very firmly on the ground.”
Significant cost savings can be generated by reducing the amount of fiber, energy, water and chemical usage in the manufacturing process. “Our ultimate goal is to understand each and every one of our customers better, and to develop a better overall picture of how process chemistry interacts with chemical additives and the impact on production and end-product quality.
Text: Jussi-Pekka Aukia
Read the full article in Kemira Solutions magazine 1/2009. The theme of the issue is tissue paper.