Remote distributed sensing

Measuring the water in the sheet at various locations between the forming section and the reel, with both fixed point and scanning measurements solves the problem of being blind to the true sources of variation in your process. Variations in water content and water removal rates change fibre swelling, web tensions and mechanical properties of the final product. When water is maintained at uniform distributions in the cross direction, and removed at optimal rates along the length of the machine, it can be run with lower draws, reducing tensions. and shrinkage so that on machine performance, converting and printing operations will run better. This paper discusses a new architecture to facilitate an economical deployment of highly accurate sensors to measure the water removal in both the cross and machine directions. This approach to measuring water and its changes across and along the paper machine is shown to benefit the efficiency of production and the quality of that production.