On energy efficiency in chip refining

Paper in proceeding, 2014

The quality of TMP has been investigated for a CD82 chip refiner both with respect to normal variations and as a result of step changes of production rate, dilution water feed rates and plate gaps. A given level of tensile index was reached over a wide range in specific energy input. The energy efficiency with respect to tensile index decreased if the pulp consistency in the blow line exceeded 55 %. The extended entropy model applied on the refiner showed that the calculated pulp consistency after the flat zone could be extremely high, leading to lower energy efficiency. This was not possible to detect by the measured values for the pulp consistency in the blow line. The short time variations in tensile index correlated more strongly with the model based total residence time in the two refining zones than with the motor load.