Modern Paper Quality Control

The increasing functional needs of top-quality printing papers and packaging paperboards, and especially the rapid developments in electronic printing processes and various computer printers during past few years, set new targets and requirements for modern paper quality. Most of these paper grades of today have relatively high filler content, are moderately or heavily calendered , and have many coating layers for the best appearance and performance. In practice, this means that many of the traditional quality assurance methods, mostly designed to measure papers made of pure. native pulp only, can not reliably (or at all) be used to analyze or rank the quality of modern papers. Hence, introduction of new measurement techniques is necessary to assure and further develop the paper quality today and in the future. Paper formation , i.e. small scale (millimeter scale) variation of basis weight, is the most important quality parameter of paper-making due to its influence on practically all the other quality properties of paper. The ideal paper would be completely uniform so that the basis weight of each small point (area) measured would be the same. In practice, of course, this is not possible because there always exists relatively large local variations in paper. However, these small scale basis weight variations are the major reason for many other quality problems, including calender blacking uneven coating result, uneven printing result, etc. The traditionally used visual inspection or optical measurement of the paper does not give us a reliable understanding of the material variations in the paper because in modern paper making process the optical behavior of paper is strongly affected by using e.g. fillers, dye or coating colors. Futhermore, the opacity (optical density) of the paper is changed at different process stages like wet pressing and calendering. The greatest advantage of using beta transmission method to measure paper formation is that it can be very reliably calibrated to measure true basis weight variation of all kinds of paper and board, independently on sample basis weight or paper grade. This gives us the possibility to measure, compare and judge papers made of different raw materials, different color, or even to measure heavily calendered, coated or printed papers. Scientific research of paper physics has shown that the orientation of the top layer (paper surface) fibers of the sheet paly the key role in paper curling and cockling , causing the typical practical problems (paper jam) with modern fax and copy machines, electronic printing , etc. On the other hand, the fiber orientation at the surface and middle layer of the sheet controls the bending stiffness of paperboard . Therefore, a reliable measurement of paper surface fiber orientation gives us a magnificent tool to investigate and predict paper curling and coclking tendency, and provides the necessary information to finetune, the manufacturing process for optimum quality. many papers, especially heavily calendered and coated grades, do resist liquid and gas penetration very much, bing beyond the measurement range of the traditional instruments or resulting invonveniently long measuring time per sample . The increased surface hardness and use of filler minerals and mechanical pulp make a reliable, nonleaking sample contact to the measurement head a challenge of its own. Paper surface coating causes, as expected, a layer which has completely different permeability characteristics compared to the other layer of the sheet. The latest developments in sensor technologies have made it possible to reliably measure gas flow in well controlled conditions, allowing us to investigate the gas penetration of open structures, such as cigarette paper, tissue or sack paper, and in the low permeability range analyze even fully greaseproof papers, silicon papers, heavily coated papers and boards or even detect defects in barrier coatings ! Even nitrogen or helium may be used as the gas, giving us completely new possibilities to rank the products or to find correlation to critical process or converting parameters. All the modern paper machines include many on-line measuring instruments which are used to give the necessary information for automatic process control systems. hence, the reliability of this information obtained from different sensors is vital for good optimizing and process stability. If any of these on-line sensors do not operate perfectly ass planned (having even small measurement error or malfunction ), the process control will set the machine to operate away from the optimum , resulting loss of profit or eventual problems in quality or runnability. To assure optimum operation of the paper machines, a novel quality assurance policy for the on-line measurements has been developed, including control procedures utilizing traceable, accredited standards for the best reliability and performance.