New Refiner Improves Sheet Properties & Reduces Refining Energy, 2003 Spring Technical Conference Proceedings

Conical and double disc refiners were originally designed and intended to shorten and fibrillate long cotton and softwood fibers for papermaking. In the early 1980’s, Jylhavaara introduced a new style medium angle, doublecone, conical refiner. The Jylhavaara conical refiner was originally developed to improve the refining homogeneity and decrease the high no-load energy requirements associated with the conical and disc refiners. Building upon their double disc refiner base design, they created a conical refiner with a cantilevered removable rotor. This enabled the use of a cast tackle with an increased edge length and shallower channels. The new rotating assembly decreased the no-load energy requirement and the new tackle reduced the intensity and improved the refining (when compared to previous conical refiners). This refiner gained widespread use in Europe. However, the refiner was not successful with hardwood and other short fiber pulps as the intensity could not be reduced to the level required for good development without fiber shortening.

In 1997, Westvaco installed a new, triple-cone, double-flow conical refiner at their recycled linerboard mill in Valinhos Brazil. The trial results from this installation also showed that the new style conical refiners have improved fiber development and energy efficiency when compared to past conical and double disk refiners. Subsequent trials and installations on various types of fibers have duplicated these results. The new triple-cone refiner performed very well in developing short/recycled fibers while retaining fiber length and strength.