Fourdrinier wire stock

Subsequent to stock preparation and proper dilution, the paper furnish usually is fed to the paper machine through one or more screens or other devices to remove dirt and fiber bundles. It then enters a flow spreader which provides a uniform flowing stream and which is the width of the paper machine. The flow spreader, or manifold, discharges the slurry into a headbox, where fiber flocculation is minimised by microturbulence and where the proper pressure head is provided to cause the slurry to flow at the proper velocity through the slice and onto the moving Fourdrinier wire. 

The pulp and paper additives enter the process first through a dump chest in their concentrated form. Adjustments are then made to the concentration in the stock chest just prior to transfer onto the Fourdrinier wire where the paper sheet is produced. Surface additives are sprayed after sheet formation and the final sheet is dried at high temperatures in dryers. The water from the wire is removed into underground tanks and in most cases, recirculated and reused. 

At the end of the Fourdrinier wire a couch roll removes more water from the web before it is transferred to the press section. At this point the moisture content of the web is about 80% water (20% consistency, 200g/L). The white water from the Fourdrinier is continuously recycled 1000 kg of stock at 0.5% consistency is reduced to a 25 kg mat (5 kg fibre, 20 kg water) by the time it leaves the wire and 975 kg of white water is recycled to the make-up chest and thence back to the headbox. A 500 tonne a day papermachine recycles some 100 000 m of water a day. 

Although the Fourdrinier machine is used for making almost all grades of paper and board, other designs are sometimes more advantageous. The cylinder machine, invented at about the same time as the Fourdrinier, consists of a rotating cylindrical mold covered with a wire screen and partially submerged in a vat. The stock flows into the vat, and a mat is formed on the cylinder under a hydraulic head difference between the stock level in the vat and the white-water level inside the cylinder. The... 

The prepared fibre stock is made into paper (or cardboard) by so-called Fourdrinier paper machines. First, the prepared stock containing approximately 0.2-1.5% of solid material flows via the stock inlet or flow spreader into a pressurised head boXy from which the stock is distributed evenly onto a moving wire. On this moving, endless wire, now made of plastic polymers, the paper sheet is formed by draining away water by gravity and vacuum suction, and by fibre orientation under turbulence, which forms fibre networks. 

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