Dryad Technology, Inc.

   The Developers of the New Millennium Paper Coating and Sizing Technology

Sizing is now commercially available

Sizing at 25%...30% starch solids is becoming commercial with the first unit using our patented technology at start-up phase in Germany. The product quality in sizing will rival that of a film press. These units are easy to retrofit on existing machines with the size press. For those who are not sizing today the combination of the size press and the spray unit is highly competitive with the existing alternatives.

In addition to high sizing solids we also control the amount of the starch that is added to paper surfaces and we then finish the sheet to desired quality with the press. The size and moisture profiling can be included as options.

Coating will follow shortly

We are ready to offer our low pressure spray coating soon as a commercial product. Extensive testing in respected paper laboratory pilots show that we can create high quality single and multi layer coated papers from a multitude of thin layers or we can simply spray it all at once, say up to 20 g/m^2. This all can be done at high speed, high quality and operating efficiency that will make the paper makers highly competitive.

The early testing using the "Model 2002" spray unit proved that our spray technology is viable for coating. Our technology and our claims were further proven in a mill in Germany that installed a spray system several years ago that used the high pressure nozzles - all supplied by one of the majors. As this unit does not include our patented smoothening device the resulting product can compete only on a small fraction of the coated paper markets.

What is in the future?

We continue developing our patented spray paper manufacturing process that has potential to make paper using up to 5%+ fiber suspensions.  Ahlstrom (A Finnish company) tried a resembling technology in mid 1970's and while making quality product the operating range of the system was too narrow for the paper industry requirements. We do not have this limitation. When completed water consumption in paper forming section can be reduced by up to 90% with sizeable reduction in energy consumption.

We are ready to discuss licensing or selling this technology. We own controlling stake to all of above referred patented spray sizing and coating technology and fully the spray paper manufacturing technology.

DRYAD Group announce continuing success since their testing program for paper and board sizing started in 2008 on a high speed pilot machine in Finland.

Our spray technology and potential applications are shown in this short presentation.

Our first product the spray sizing unit require only little space and can be added to almost any existing size press.  Sizing itself becomes a simple process, one sprays the desired amount of high solids starch on the paper surfaces and finishes the paper to desired quality with the size press. Contrary to some claims even in some international patents use of air/stem as motive gas in the low pressure nozzles brings up a technology that wakes up a major financial advantage over the current alternatives on the market.

In spray coating the critical additional unit is the smoothening device replacing the size press. Various smoothening devices can be used that all aim to securing the highest possible surface quality for the finished sheet. We can go from a "touch free" non-doctoring air blade to a low pressure "brushing" blades and rolls. As said in our patents spray coating can be done both with high and low pressure nozzles while only the low pressure allows the unlimited control of the amount of coating color that is sprayed. The spraying is more demanding as the spray mist spray unit must be controlled and removed. One can get an idea of "how", by watching our nozzle development program from video clips. We show also some SEM pictures of the unfinished paper surface from our first pilot machine run in the US South covering untreated, sized and coated boards.  

We are confident that the spray technology will be adopted by the industry. This technology allows inexpensive retrofit opportunities to all wanting to upgrade their production facilities to more profitable units for the current paper grades. It is also conceivable that all the mills adopting this technology will discover new opportunities to become even more competitive. The early adopters will gain an enviable market position.