Pulp & Paper

It depends on fiber length and consistency more than on the solids percentage alone. Short fines pass readily, while long fiber and stringy material can bridge at the inlet port. Send consistency, fiber type and any plastics or debris known to be in the stream, and if the stream is heavier than a Free-Flow channel suits, a Temp-Plate bank is the next step.

EPDM is usually the starting point for hot alkaline service, since it resists caustic far better than nitrile. The upper temperature and any oil or turpentine carryover can rule it out, so those need to be in the data. For the hottest liquor duties, a semi-welded construction that removes the gasket from the liquor side is worth comparing.

More than you would allow on clean water, because a Free-Flow channel needs velocity to keep fiber moving and to scour the surface. Starving the pressure drop to save pump power is the usual cause of a pack that plugs within weeks. If an existing pump feeds the stream, send it's curve and we work the pass arrangement around what it can deliver.

Where warm effluent or white water runs to drain at the same time fresh make-up is being heated for the process. Matching those two flows in time matters as much as their temperatures, since recovered heat with nowhere to go earns nothing. Give us the flows and temperatures on both streams across a typical day, and we can judge what a Free-Flow unit would recover.