Refiner Plate Used for Pulp Refining
Refiner plate is often hailed as the “heart” of a disc refiner and serve as critical components in the refining process. As the old adage goes—”papermaking is one-third papermaking and two-thirds pulping”—the refining stage permeates virtually the entire process of shaping the properties of fibrous materials and stands as one of the most vital operations in papermaking.
With the advent of continuous conical refiner, the disc refiner subsequently evolved and gained increasingly widespread application. Utilizing refiner plate (comprising a rotor and a stator) as its core refining elements, the disc refiner serves as the most critical piece of equipment in the refining process and is primarily applied in two key areas:
- High-Consistency Refining: An example of this is mechanical pulping via disc refining, refiner plate mechanically process wood chips to obtain the coarse pulp raw material required for production.
- Low-Consistency Refining: To further refine, fibrillate, and broom the fibers within the coarse pulp—thereby achieving specific targets for freeness, wetness, and other parameters—the pulp is subjected to a subsequent low-consistency refining process. This step ensures the pulp properties align more closely with the specific performance requirements of the final paper product and are optimally adapted to the subsequent papermaking process.
The Impact of Refiner Plate Tooth Profile on Disc Refining
Each type of refiner plate usually has several or dozens of different tooth profiles to choose from. Different pulps, paper types, and processes require the selection of refiner plates with suitable tooth profiles. Whether the design and selection of the refiner plate tooth shape are reasonable will directly affect the quality and efficiency of pulping in the pulping machine. Therefore, ensuring pulping quality and fully maximizing the efficiency of pulping equipment is of paramount importance.
 |
 |
 |
 |
Classification of Refiner Plate Tooth Profiles
-
Cutting-Fin Refiner Plate
Characterized by a relatively small inclination angle and a design featuring short cutting lengths, these plates generate a high specific edge load. This enhances shearing force and refining intensity, thereby facilitating the transverse cutting of the long fibers found in raw materials such as cotton pulp, bamboo pulp, and softwood sulfate pulp. This type of refiner plate is well-suited for “free beating” refining applications; it enables a rapid reduction in the wet weight of long fibers with minimal power consumption, thereby contributing to improved pulp uniformity.
-
Soft-Fin Refiner Plate
Featuring a curved-tooth design with softened shear angles, these plates effectively mitigate the issues of excessive fiber shearing and insufficient fibrillation during the refining process by optimizing the width of the tooth grooves, the inclination angles, etc. To maximize the suppression of lateral shear effects during the beating of short fibers, the designed soft-fin refiner plate fully account for the interrelationships among the pumping angle, shear angle, and efficient energy utilization, while employing an arc-shaped tooth profile to enhance pulp turbulence. These refiner plates are ideally suited for low-shear refining modes, serving to promote fiber strength and increase the specific surface area of the fibers while simultaneously preserving their original length.
As the pulp passes through the bent or curved channels of the soft-fin refiner plates, fluid interference forces are generated; these forces alter the flow direction and induce turbulence. Consequently, the pulp is readily thrown against the plate surfaces, ensuring thorough refining; simultaneously, the lateral cutting action on the fibers is minimized, thereby preventing raw pulp from being ejected directly. These refiner plates are widely applicable to high-, medium-, and low-consistency disc refiners, as well as thermomechanical refiners. Furthermore, they are suitable for the fiber preparation and beating of softwood pulp, hardwood pulp, straw pulp, and waste paper pulp.
-
Broom-Fin Refiner Plate
This type of refiner plate is equipped with a closed pulp baffle and a high-friction design with coarse-grained multi-alloy refiner plate, which can quickly promote the increase of fiber specific surface area and fiber refinement, improve pulping degree and avoid “raw pulp” being thrown out, so that the fibers can be fully ground under the conditions of fluid force and centrifugal force. The refiner plate has a large intersecting tooth structure, which weakens the transverse cutting effect on the fiber and strengthens the splitting, fuzzing, and buffing phenomena. It effectively improves the fiber bonding strength, reduces the power consumption of beating under the same beating conditions, is suitable for viscous beating, and has a strong effect on fiber splitting and brooming, which is beneficial to improving the degree of beating and the brooming rate.
-
Deflaking Refiner Plate
Characterized by a large tooth inclination angle and strong pumping capability, these plates are well-suited for beating system for mild defibering requirements. They are among the most commonly used types of refiner plates. Offering high throughput and superior pulping efficiency, they effectively reduce overall pulping time. It is suitable for pulping various pulp types, and its strong desiccation and pumping capabilities improve pulp yield and reduce power consumption.