Increased energy efficiency is a major concern for all companies today. Not only does the cost efficiency follow energy efficiency but also environmental and sustainability aspects motivate more energy efficient production lines. A study has been made on a pilot paper machine with the purpose to show the magnitude and time of rewetting after high vacuum suction box dewatering. The grammages used in this study were 20 and 100 g/m2 to cover both tissue and printing paper grades. Machine speed was varied from 400 to 1600 m/min and the maximum pressure drop in the suction box was 32 kPa. The pulp used was unbeaten, chemical, fully bleached softwood from Sweden. Rewetting is observed when the dewatering in the suction box is sufficiently high. No rewetting takes place when the dewatering in the suction box is limited due to insufficient pressure drop and dwell time. The time for the rewetting is in the range of 10-50 ms and in this study the maximum rewetting observed is 180 g/m2, or 6.1% decrease in dryness. The mechanisms behind the phenomenon are believed to be capillary forces caused by sufficiently low sheet moisture and expansion of the network. This study shows that rewetting is so fast that it would be difficult to prevent it without changing major machine parameters.

This investigation used numerical models to describe forming section sheet dewatering at the high vacuum suction boxes. Three different fabric structures were examined with numerical models for single-phase flow of air and for two-phase flow of air and water. This was done to evaluate how forming fabric structure influences sheet dewatering. The numerical models were compared with an experimental study of the same fabrics investigated on a laboratory suction box. The small differences in dewatering rate in the experimental study could be simulated with the models, which confirmed the validity of the models. This implies that these numerical models can be used to describe new fabrics and how they will respond in the papermaking process.

Previous paper (Rahman et al. 2017) showed that the yield of softwood kraft pulp increased by the addition of either polysulfide or sodium borohydride because of higher hemicellulose retention. An increase in hemicellulose content can make dewatering more difficult as WRV of the pulp increases, but instead, an overall increase in pulp yield could improve dewatering as a sheet of a certain weight will contain fewer fibres, giving a more open sheet structure. It was therefore of interest to measure the dewatering properties of low grammage handsheets (20 g/m2) under conditions mimicking the tissue paper machine dewatering processes, and sheet strength properties, WRV, °SR and fibre dimensions were also studied. The results showed that the positive influence of overall yield increase dominated over the negative influence of an increase in hemicellulose content on the dewatering properties, particularly at lower refining energy levels. Moreover, higher yield and higher hemicellulose content pulps had a higher tensile index at the same dryness. A given tensile index was achieved with less refining energy. The results indicate that increased yield and hemicellulose content by modification of the kraft pulping process will result in a pulp with a potential to improve tissue paper quality.

The addition of nano-and micro-fibrillated cellulose to conventional softwood Kraft pulps can enhance the product performance by increasing the strength properties and enabling the use of less raw material for a given product performance. However, dewatering is a major problem when implementing these materials to conventional paper grades because of their high water retention capacity. This study investigated how vacuum dewatering is affected by different types of additives. The hypothesis was that different types of pulp additions behave differently during a process like vacuum suction, even when the different additions have the same water retention value. One reference pulp and three additives were used in a laboratory-scaled experimental study of high vacuum suction box dewatering. The results suggested that there was a linear relationship between the water retention value and how much water that could be removed with vacuum dewatering. However, the linear relationship was dependent upon the pulp type and the additives. Additions of micro-fibrillated cellulose and dialcohol cellulose to the stock led to dewatering behaviors that suggested their addition in existing full-scale production plants can be accomplished without a major redesign of the wire or high vacuum section.

Dewatering and air flow in high vacuum suction boxes was examined. The work was mainly numerical and was based on, and compared with, previously published experimental results of vacuum dewatering from laboratory equipment and from a pilot paper machine. A previously published numerical model for wet pressing is used as the basis for this work. The aims of this study were to find new fitting parameters that allows the previous model to be used for vacuum dewatering instead of pressing, and to examine two extensions to the original model. The results indicate that the new vacuum dewatering model for moisture can predict the dewatering behavior for several different experimental data series both from laboratory equipment and a pilot paper machine using the same set of fitting parameters. Two different numerical models for air flow through the paper sheet, during vacuum dewatering, were developed based on postulating that the decrease in moisture permeability is accompanied by a simultaneous increase in air permeability. The models for air flow can also be fitted to experimental data and predict the magnitudes of air flow during vacuum dewatering. The data sets for air flow exhibit a certain degree of operator dependence though, so that one set of fitting parameters is not enough for obtaining good agreement with all data sets.