RefineRich is a beater additive, which is regarded as a 'chemical hydrator' that could substitute for refining time, a consideration that has taken on a new value in terms of energy equivalency. With the ever growing increment in power rates, thrust for energy conservation and limitations on production utilities, RefineRich is a product which can help you to overcome energy problems and time saving tool.

Since, RefineRich is a chemical hydrator and reduces refining duration, other problems, such as generation of fines and thereby reduction in tear properties will also be cured to a certain extent. Greater refining also reflects in increased wet web strength and overall physical properties of the paper.

Due to inherent properties of RefineRich, it also contributes in increasing surface and gloss ink printing characteristics and impart greater oil & grease resistance.

As mentioned earlier, during the development of RefineRich, we tried to incorporate certain important features in the product, which is desired by the papermakers.

First one is to increase refining and for the same purpose, we modified the base in such a way to increase the refining of pulp due to capability of penetrating inside the fiber lumps and increase its specific volume and convert the tight bunch of fiber into a loosely and relatively more open fiber agglomerate. Now since the surface chemistry of fiber has changed it disintegrates more or we can say gets easily refine to a greater extent at the same shear.

The second important feature of the product is to increase strength of paper. For a long time, paper industry has used guargum to achieve paper strength, the phenomenon for the same is hydrogen bonding.

Since the last decade much of the work on modification of gums for paper industry was based on ionic character. Efforts have been done to impose cationic charge/amphoteric charge on the gum particles but till date no company is able to successfully market such products, for the reasons of uncontrollable charge variations in the mill and product cost which shoots up to a very high extent after this modification.

We at Goodrich, with the collective efforts of Paper technocrats and gum specialists do modify our product but in a different way, so that our Gum has higher branched chain and desired substituted groups which can perform the desired results.

Considerable energy in Stock Preparation is consumed by refiners for obtaining the desired ⁰SR. Any chemical which can substitute for refining, leading to reduction in energy consumption, which is the need of hour, and also improve the strength properties of pulp & paper is a desirable product for the papermaker.

After exhaustive R&D and practical studies in various plants by our technocrats, it was found that any product which can change the surface characteristics of pulp, has the capability to penetrating into the fiber bundle and also belong to the carbohydrate family (since cellulose & carbohydrates have similar structure) is suitable for the purpose. RefineRich hydrates the fiber in controlled selective manner so that it does not get deteriorated to generate fines during mechanical refining.

After conducting various lab evaluations, plant trials and feedback from the users, it has been observed, that RefineRich gives following benefits :

Increases the refining of the pulp, hence used as a tool of power saving
RefineRich is a very useful product for mills, having refining limitations
Improves the dry strength properties of the paper
Improvement in the strength properties of the pulp & paper is reflected in better runnability
Due to improved hydration in stock, machine speed can be increased, if other factors permit
Fillers can be increased while maintaining the strength properties
Other wet end additives for strength may be reduced/stopped after using RefineRich
Maintaining the Tear Factor and prevent it from dropping which is generally reduced by Refiners due to pulp disintegration