MicroBar fillings for increased capacity and energy-efficiency
To get the best from hardwood pulps, such as short eucalyptus fibers, requires refiner fillings with a dense bar pattern. Unfortunately, the resulting narrow grooves with a standard filling design leads to lower hydraulic capacity and poor efficiency. MicroBar fillings are an innovative solution offering clearly higher refiner capacity and energy savings for low-consistency refining of hardwood and mixed pulps.
The MicroBar design features special capacity grooves feeding the fibers uniformly to the refining zone, allowing a very fine bar pattern to maximize cutting edge length. This leads to significantly higher loadability compared to standard fillings, thus minimizing wear due to less segment contact and the higher capacity can reduce the number of refiners needed.
The unique design of the feeding grooves provides high hydraulic capacity while making MicroBar insensitive to fiber length, fiber type and freeness.
Energy savings, compared to conventional fillings, can be considerable with MicroBar for similar SR or tensile levels. The same filling design can be used for refining long, short or mixed fibers, while experiencing considerably less plugging when the SW/HW ratio variation is high. The advantages of MicroBar also include the easy runnability of the refiner, including an easy start.
