scope:

This TIP outlines procedures for determining the water removal performance of the flat box section of sheet formers. The objective of the TIP is to provide a high-resolution method to maximize dewatering and minimize frictional drag load, fabric wear, airflow and vacuum requirements, and required on-machine hardware. The method can be used to design a new installation or optimize the operation of an existing installation.

The method described is based on empirical work on a pilot machine, verified on many commercial paper machines. Data was acquired on the pilot machine and regression analysis was used to reduce the data to an easily usable form.