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Water and Money Savings: Full Width Shower versus Traversing Shower for Tissue Mills

Most tissue mills focus their fabric cleaning and conditioning efforts on improving cleaning efficiency and effectiveness by focusing on:

  • Removing stickies more effectively
  • Reducing water consumption
  • Reducing energy costs
  • Minimizing or eliminating mist generated by high-pressure spray nozzles
  • Transporting captured contaminants and oil away from the machine and water loop
  • Stopping or minimizing passivation usage

As an example, consider a U.S. tissue mill that was looking for new methods to improve its hygiene and fabric cleaning processes to achieve better operating performance. Several alternatives were discussed, including options to use a full-width shower and a traversing shower system. Based on the trial results of the mill’s fabric sample tested on Kadant’s pilot machine in Sweden, the benefits of the M-clean cleaning system were deemed the best alternative when it came to cost-effective fabric cleaning. The mill also wanted to know if a traversing shower could clean the fabric at the same frequency of a full-width shower. The answer is, yes.

full width showerFull-width Shower

multijet traversing shower blogTraversing Shower
Despite the improved cleaning achieved by the M-clean™ tissue fabric cleaning system, water consumption and cost savings ended up being the main focus. This particular machine uses municipal fresh water in the showers at a cost of $6 per 1,000 gallons. Two fabrics where considered for this analysis: an outer forming fabric and a TAD fabric.

Outer Forming Fabric Cleaning: Water Consumption Cost Analysis
The fabric has a flooded nip shower followed by two high-pressure showers (roll side and sheet side) at 500 psi followed by a sheet side high-pressure fan shower at 400 psi. The recommendation was to replace two high-pressure needle jet showers with one M-clean tissue fabric cleaning system, improving permeability profile on the fabric and saving water.

showermoneywatersavingsblogpost fig 1

TAD Fabric Cleaning: Water Consumption Cost Analysis
The fabric has a flooded nip shower followed by a chisel shower and two high-pressure showers (roll side and sheet side. The recommendation is to replace two high-pressure needle jet showers with one M-clean tissue fabric cleaning system, improving spot cleaning, stickies removal, permeability profile on the fabric and saving water.

showermoneywatersavingsblogpost fig 2

In summary, the traversing shower can be used with the same or even better cleaning frequency when compared to the full-width showers but operates with much higher efficiency and with at least 96% less water consumption. The payback based on water savings alone when using the M-clean tissue fabric cleaning system can be less than two years.

  • Written by:

    Marcelo DeBoni

    Product Line Manager – Water Management, Kadant Solutions Division

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