OPTIMASS: Density Measurement of Carbonate Slurry in the Paper Industry

The measurement of the density of Carbonate slurry has evolved considerably in the last few years in the paper industry and in particular at our customer in Finland.

Initially the density was measured using Radiometric density meters and, combined with an electromagnetic flowmeter, the mass flow was calculated. Here Berthold density meters and KROHNE PROFIFLUX 5110F magnetic flowmeters were used.


Later on this measurement method was discontinued due to the ?perceived? dangers of Radiometric measurement and Single Straight Tube Coriolis meters were used to replace this technology. The process involves an evaporation process where the slurry is continuously circulated untill the correct density is achieved in the evaporator.

The Carbonate slurry is then pumped to a storage tank. A KROHNE 300 G+ was used for this process. In the initial production and mixing of the slurry an 800G+ was used. Further enhancement of the process was made using the Multi I/O option in the mass meters. This provided the plant engineers with more data with respect to the process, in addition to density, eg temperature, mass flow etc. Subsequent orders of mass flowmeters from KROHNE had the PROFIBUS PA option which gave the plant engineers more flexibility in the control and monitoring of the plant.

New Evaporator

When it was decided to install a new evaporator the natural progression was to use the new OPTIMASS meters from KROHNE. This project was started in October 2002 and fully commissioned by May 2003. Here an OPTIMASS MFM7051 T40 with PROFIBUS PA was used. KROHNE magnetic flowmeter model PROFIFLUX 5090 WITH PROFIBUS PA was used for water addition to the process.




AP0220