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Sept. 13th, 2-4 PM • George R. Brown Convention Center • Houston, TX • Track 6 • Session 6B
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The Reason
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Tree resin, depsite its usefulness throughout history (e.g. in waterproofing ancient Roman ships), is an enormous pain in the specific context of papermaking. Known industrially as pitch, this organic matter emerges from the wood in the pulping process, which aims to isolate strictly the cellulose fibers from which paper is made. If the pitch is not washed away, it will stick to the rolls and wires of the papermaking machinery while also staining the canvas and causing breaks in the paper web. In high-volume printing, machine shutdown and web breaks translate to huge financial losses.
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The Method
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Ensuring that pitch does not accumulate in the mechanical pulp is achieved by verifying the inverse, i.e. that the pitch remains dissolved in the pulping process wastewater. The various organic compounds that constitute pitch commonly have strong light absorbance around the 280nm wavelength due to their conjugated double bonds; this trait makes the concentration of these organic compounds in water highly detectable through UV-VIS spectrophotometry. The OMA-300 continuously monitors pitch in water and can predict problems by registering any sudden decrease in dissolved pitch. This system allows for automated feedback mechanisms such as the injection of fine talc or other fixative chemicals to disperse pitch deposits.
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More Information
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Read about the OMA-300 Process Analyzer, the system used for online pitch analysis. |
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© 2011 Applied Analytics Group
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