Acrison International.

SAP feeding specialist Acrison's new flow splitter (shown here), is designed for separating SAP streams into smaller streams in the production of multi-layer absorbent hygiene products. Crucially, the splitter maintains the required split ratio even as the SAP rate is increased or decreased. It does this by incorporating technology from Acrison's patented AirSAP device, which was developed to ensure a consistent spread of SAP across a desired width, for instance, in the production of sanitary napkins with an absorbent core using an airlaid web supplemented by a layer of SAP for extra absorbency.

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"We realized that some manufacturers were attempting to produce a multi-layer product by taking a single SAP feeder and then dividing the output stream into two separate streams," explained Acrison segment manager, John Wheeldon. "Often, they were doing this using fairly crude splitter devices that could be adjusted to provide the necessary split ratio at a fixed rate, but they noticed that the split ratio varied wildly as the rate was increased or decreased. This caused particular problems at line ramp-up or during periods of low speed running e.g. during roll splicing. We realized there was nothing on the market to meet this requirement so we adapted our patented AirSap technology to produce a splitter which was able to maintain a consistent split ratio. The reaction of the market tells us the development of such a device was long overdue."