Investigation of Properties of Synthetic Microparticles for a Retention and Drainage System

Over the past 20 years there has been a revolution involving the use of nano or macro size particles as drainage and retention systems during the manufacture of paper. More recently a group of patented technologies called Synthetic Mineral Microparticles (SMM) has been invented and developed. This system has potential to further promote the drainage of water and retention of fine particles during papermaking. Prior research, as well as our on preliminary research showed that the SMM system has advantages in both of drainage and retention compared with montmorillonite (bentonite), which one of the most popular materials presently used in this kind of application. In spite of the demonstrated advantages of this SMM system, the properties and activity of SMM particles in the aqueous state have not been elucidated yet. Streaming current titrations with highly charged polyelectrolytes were used to measure the charge properties of SMM and to understand the interactions among SMM particles, fibers, fiber fines, and cationic polyacrylamide (cPAM) as a retention aid. It was found that pH profoundly affects the charge properties of SMM, due to the influence of Al-ions and the Si-containing particle surface. SEM pictures, characterizing the morphology, geometry and size distribution of SMM, showed an broad distribution of primary particle size. Dilution of SMM mixturee appeared to wash out particles smaller than 100 nm from the surface of larger particles, which themselves appeared to be composed of fused primary particles. DSC thermoporometry was used to measure the size distribution of nanopores within SMM particles.