Reduced Periphery FINEBAR® Patterns

Reducing the active plate diameter is a good low-cost approach to minimize gross power consumption and refine at the proper intensity -- as long as the bar edge length and hydraulic capacity of the plate are maintained.

In all pump-through refiners, power is consumed in two different ways:

1. Applied directly to fibers as they are impacted between rotor and stator bars. This is referred to as the net power or energy.
   
   
2. A portion is also consumed as a result of hydraulic pumping effects and energy loss associated with viscous shearing of the fluid. This is called the 'no load' power.

For all fiber types, significant energy savings can be achieved by reducing the refiner no load which can be considered as 'wasted' power since very little is effectively absorbed by the fibers. No load power is primarily dependent on refiner plate diameter and rotational speed.

Given that motor speed is typically fixed, reducing the active diameter of the refiner plate presents a very significant opportunity to reduce no load horsepower. However, in order to maintain quality and process requirements, reduced diameter plates must maintain total bar edge length and have sufficient groove volume for flow capacity.

FINEBAR® Reduced Periphery plates minimizes no load power requirements while maintaining groove volume as well as high bar edge length for low-intensity refining. This results in significant power savings without impacting quality or process flow requirements. The table below shows examples of potential energy savings that would result from a reduction in the active diameter of refiner plates operating at typical speeds.

Active Plate Diameter	Reduced Active Plate Diameter	Rotational Speed	Nominal No-load	Reduced No-load	Power Savings	Annualized Savings @ $0.08/kWh
in	in	RPM	kW	kW	kW
46	43	450	246	184	62	$43,392
46	40	450	246	134	112	$78,420
42	39	514	246	179	67	$47,052
38	35	514	160	112	48	$33,982
34	31	600	160	104	56	$39,210
34	31	514	101	68	33	$23,003
30	27	600	93	60	34	$23,526
26	23	720	86	52	34	$23,526