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Mesoscale Liquid Absorption Properties of Towel Papers
TAPPI Papercon, 2019 International Paper Physics Conference
(2019)
Abstract
For most tissue and towel products the interaction with liquids, especially aqueous solutions, is one of the most significant characteristics. The rate of wetting, holding capacity, and spreading of liquid within the structure, while maintaining strength, all contribute to the ranked quality of the product. This investigation explored the fundamental interactions of liquids with the web structure at scales from 10-5 to 10-2 meters, i.e. dimensions of fibers and features, and quantified the behavior of various retail towel products formed using different process-es. The wetting of liquids, by itself, is a complex interaction of surface energetics and structural geometry that for sparse fibrous webs is not simply modeled by capillary transport theories. The heterogeneity of the struc-ture, the existence of crevasses formed by creping and fiber alignment, and deflection of the fibers and structure in the Z-direction, all significantly affect wetting behavior. This paper describes the results of experiments that combine precise characterization of the structure with measurement of the in-plane spreading of small volumes (2 µl) of water under dynamic and steady state conditions. The spreading of water and aqueous solutions was recorded by video imaging in the visible and mid-infrared wavelength region. The advancing fluid front and the wetted area were analyzed considering structural properties. The experiments examined the response of the samples to a range of continuous rates of injection between 50 and 800 mL/s, and the spreading of the liquid after the total volume was delivered. Considerable differences exist between retail paper towel samples formed using either the conventional wet pressing or the through air drying processes.
Disciplines
Publication Date
2019
DOI
https://imisrise.tappi.org/TAPPI/Products/19/PAP/19PAP40.aspx
Citation Information
D. Steven Keller and Hossein Abedsoltan. "Mesoscale Liquid Absorption Properties of Towel Papers" TAPPI Papercon, 2019 International Paper Physics Conference (2019) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/hossein-abedsoltan/24/