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CalciTech's SCC has a multitude of potential applications. CalciTech has identified the paper industry as a key market and set forth to develop products for this market. At present, CalciTech has launched five products, CalciLS™, CalciSG™, CalciRG™, CalciRC™ and CalciSP™. All five products are aimed at the high-end performance spectrum of the paper industry.
CalciTech Coating SCC: uniformity of particles and particle size distribution leads to superior products |
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Coating PCC: limited uniformity of particles and particle size distribution |
Of the five products, CalciLS™ is designed to maximise light scattering. CalciLS™ is targeted at fine paper applications and Super Calendered A+ "SCA+" on a cost effective basis. Examples of such applications are Bible paper, security paper, laminating paper, auto-adhesive labels, flexible packaging etc.
CalciSG™, is designed to provide a super gloss coating for premium grade printing and writing papers including Light Weight Coated, "LWC", and coated folding boxboard. In the latter application, CalciSG™ allows for a reduction in calendaring nips to improve bulk at no loss in gloss and can be used to obtain increased stiffness.
CalciRG™ is the latest product and is aimed at the rotogravure market. First commercial tests have shown that substituting as little as 10% of the original coatings mix with CalciRG™ show a significant improvement in opacity, a very important quality parameter in this segment due to the thinness of the paper and the demands for high quality prints. Other characteristics such as brightness, roughness reduction, and smoothness also showed a significant improvement in performance.
In addition to the normal quality parameters, CalciRG™ has the same superior rheology performance as CalciTech's other SCC related products. With typical machine speeds for these paper types of around 2,000 m/min (75 mph), rheology of the coatings mix is extremely important. Using CalciRG™ as an additive to an existing coating product for the LWC and ULWC can provide a paper producer and its supplier of coating material with important competitive advantages.
The Performance
CalciTech is confident about the high quality of its products. This confidence is not only based on its own R&D and testing procedures but also on tests carried out by the CTP in Grenoble and several commercial paper producers. The high degree of process control enables the company to manipulate characteristics like particle size, crystal habit and delivers a narrow particle size distribution. What this means in terms of the products' behaviour as, for example, a coating material becomes clear when looking at the results of a number of the tests that have been carried out. The results are given in figures one through four and in table 1.
In addition to the characteristics highlighted in these figures and table, further product characteristics are:
- Negligible abrasiveness of the coatings mix when CalciTech's SCC is used
- Lower high shear viscosity
- High ink absorption
- High Delta Print Gloss values
- Higher blistering temperature
The interesting thing is that the product characteristics of CalciTech's LS and SG not only will enable paper makers to produce higher quality paper but also reduce running costs and increase productivity.
Table 1: Coated paper characteristics
Some examples of results achieved through test runs by paper producers:
- The use of SCC at one paper mill confirmed the superior glossability of SCC. The use of SCC will allow this producer to reduce the number of calendering steps, thereby increasing production by € 7,200,000 per annum. In addition, lowering the number of calendering nips produces bulkier and stronger paper, an important selling point for certain applications.
- Trials have shown that SCC consumes less binder in coating mixtures. The potential binder saving was estimated at up to 10%. For a mill producing 250,000t of coated paper per annum, this translates in savings of up to €1,125,000 annually.
- A machine trial at a German paper mill proved the successful replacement of calcined clay with CalciTech's CalciLS. Customers typically pay in the range of €550/t dry for calcined clay. CalciTech's client consumed 6,000tpy. The switch to SCC will lead to a saving of €1,000,000 per annum.
- In some papers, SCC gives better coverage allowing the paper mill to reduce coat weight, which will lead to cost savings.
- SCC spiked coating in one customer application showed a 5 - 10 degree Celcius higher blister temperature allowing the mill to dry faster and thereby increase output.
- The superior rheology of SCC at low, medium, high and ultra high shear improves runnability meaning less breakage and down time, again leading to significant cost savings.
- The same superior rheology allows for coating mixtures with higher solids content, requiring less drying and therefore a higher productivity.
- Tests run with SCC show no abrasiveness and significantly reduced dust levels on the paper machine. This translates in less maintenance/downtime/wire change, again leading to running cost savings and productivity increases.
- Using SCC enables paper manufacturers to produce papers with higher brightness and gloss, which in turn strengthens the paper producer's competitiveness.
Using SCC has been shown to improve printability, leading to a reduction of ink use while achieving the same or higher quality output. This is an important selling point towards the printing industry, These savings, which can be substantial due to the high price of industrial inks, provide the paper producer with additional competitive strengths.
All this makes the CalciTech product offering a compelling proposition for paper producers.
Other applications
To give a further indication of the applicability of CalciTech's SCC, the company is also looking at possibilities to expand into other markets such as the paints and coatings market, the plastics and rubber markets and the food and pharmaceutical industry. A good indication of the potential the product holds is that the company was approached by a number of paint manufacturers requesting for samples. Tests conducted by a paint manufacturer have again showed that CalciTech's SCC has unique properties that are applicable within this industry as well.
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