Experience with glyoxylated polyacrylamide in paper production

It can be assumed that the use of dry strength additives will continue to increase strongly. The driving forces here, among others, are the declining quality of the available fibers and the increased demands on the strength of the paper, for example to achieve a reduction in basis weight. In addition, economic considerations, such as growing starch and energy costs, are leading to the increased use of dry strength additives.

A number of systems are available to papermakers for this purpose, with polyacrylamides representing the most important product group of synthetic dry strength additives. In Europe, anionic polyacrylamides are used for charge balancing, e.g. in the production of highly wet-strength papers, and cationic glyoxylated polyacrylamides (GPAM) for dry strength. Furthermore, in the case of cationic glyoxylated polyacrylamides, a distinction can be made between ready to dose products and products where glyoxylation of the polyacrylamide takes place on-­site in the paper or board mill.

The presentation will describe the manufacture of these products, their typical properties and their use in paper and board production.

Finally, a case study will illustrate the introduction of an on-site glyoxylated GPAM at a customer site and the results obtained. In this case, it was possible, among other things, to reduce surface starch by 30% and increase testliner production by 5%.