The presentation “Bridging Chemical Dosage, Mixing Quality and Variability in Paper Sheets” by Paul Krochak (photo), Bo Norman, Giuseppe Carmine Fasci, and Lisa Prahl Wittberg, was named the winner of the Jasper Mardon Memorial Prize recognizing the Best Papermaking Technology Paper presented at PaperCon 2013.
The study investigated the fact that poor dosage and mixing of chemicals in the approach flow has long been suspected to lead to variability in paper products. The results of the study indicate the existence of optimal dosage configurations and point toward a strong coupling between chemical addition strategy, mixing quality and variability in final products.
"It is an honor to win this award. It was actually quite a large effort putting this paper together. We had some luck in getting such a strong Masters student, Giuseppe, who performed all of the modelling and simulations under Lisa's and my supervision. Bo executed the FEX demonstration trials and then he and I worked incredibly hard to put the article together. There were some times when I thought we were putting in far too much effort into a conference paper, but in hindsight it was completely worth it," says Paul Krochak who will receive the award at PaperCon 2014 in Nashville.
"Paul Krochak's paper reporting the results of a study investigating the influence of variables in chemical additive addition on final product quality is a noteworthy effort that advances the industry's understanding of this important aspect of papermaking technology," notes Larry N. Montague, TAPPI President and CEO. "It's an outstanding example of how research can advance technology and in turn lead to improved product quality and thus is very deserving of the prestigious Jasper Mardon Prize."
