Hercules has been in the business of helping papermakers size their paper and board for more than 80 years.  Our understanding of the principles of sizing and the factors that affect sizing helps us to implement a complete sizing program every time.  One of the key factors that dramatically impacts sizing is the production of a consistent, high quality size emulsion with little or no variability.

To ensure production of an excellent size emulsion, Hercules developed the Hercules Alkaline Size Emulsification (HASE) system.  The newest model is the HASE 300-75 (see Figure 1).  This state-of-the-art equipment produces a high quality size emulsion with minimal variability in emulsion particle size distribution.

The HASE 300-75 system is an exclusive design with a flexible, programmable logic controller (PLC) and a BURKS* regenerative type stainless steel turbine pump.  Pump wear rate is dramatically reduced with this longer lasting metallurgy.  This not only increases pump operating life but contributes to reduced variability of the emulsion quality since impeller adjustment is not frequently needed.  The result is on-target sizing performance.

The HASE 300-75 creates an emulsion of liquid reactive size in starch.  This unit allows the liquid reactive size emulsion to be fed directly to the paper machine using either mill-supplied starch or Prequel® pre-cooked liquid starch.  The emulsion is a dispersion of microscopic droplets of liquid reactive size in the starch.  When this emulsion is delivered to the paper machine, these microscopic droplets spread out on the paper surface and provide the paper with resistance to liquid penetration.

The HASE 300-75 system is currently available in North America only.

*Burks Pumps is a registered trademark of Crane Pumps & Systems, Inc.

Key Features

Key Features of the HASE 300-75 system include:

Allen-Bradley CompactLogix™ PLC control of all operations with PanelView 600 color screen for local parameter entry and viewing of
flow setpoints, actual size, starch and dilution water flows, as well as system alarm conditions
Can be interfaced with the paper machine DCS
Auto shut-down capability on sheet break and auto start-up when sheet clears break detector
316SS construction
BURKS regenerative type stainless steel turbine pump
Patented Life-Lok® external impeller clearance adjustment feature     allowing in-field adjustment to maintain "like new" pump performance
Greater pump life compared to bronze pumps
"Flow following" capability provides flexibility to supply LRS emulsion to a header or distribution manifold (can feed to multiple feedpoints including multiple paper machines)
Boilout and rinse/clean-out capabilities simplify maintenance (liquid    starch pump serves as the boilout chemical pump)

Recorded Benefits 

Practical applications of the Hercules Alkaline Size Emulsification system offer the following benefits:

Reliable long term operation
Less downtime for maintenance
Flexibility to use lowest cost available source of starch
Flexibility to supply size emulsion to multiple paper machines without installation of dedicated equipment for each machine
Consistent make down of size emulsion with minimal variability 
Flexible equipment set up allows for production of optimum emulsion  particle size distribution under diverse operating conditions
Auto sheet break shut-down feature minimizes size consumption and deposition potential