These products provide strength to the paper when it is wetted, this is called wet strength.
They are used many grades of paper such as sanitary tissues, currency and packaging applications.

In today’s paper and tissue manufacturing processes, some helpful chemicals such as fillers, sizing additives, defoamers, thickeners, retention aids, and welter dry strength resins are commonly used. Wet-strength resin chemicals are introduced to the stock for producing paper or tissue. 

The wet strength of paper refers to its ability to maintain its structural integrity and strength when it becomes wet or comes into contact with moisture. It is an important property for various paper products, such as tissues, towels, and packaging materials, to ensure they don’t easily disintegrate or lose their strength when exposed to water. Wet strength is typically achieved through the addition of chemicals or treatments during the papermaking process.

Paper often retains 3 to 5 percent of its dry strength after being thoroughly wet, which is most usually called to be the support of fiber-to-fiber friction. Wet strength resin chemicals give the paper 10 to 50 percent of its dry strength when wet. However, this property is often used in other paper and paperboard categories, too, such as kitchen towel paper, coffee filters, sanitary towels, and some packages.

However, this strength is usually measured as a wettear or wettensile, and is also better represented as the portion of ‘tear maintained or dry tensile’ (“wetover dry”).

The most widely recommended wet strength resin chemical by suppliers are PAE, DAS, UF, MF, and PEI. Although if the wetstrength of either the paper grade is far too high, there would be a significant problem before and after the re-pulping process. It is, therefore, vital to learn how to effectively de-gradate paper via high wetstrength.

Wet Strength Resin High-Efficiency Technology Breakthrough

For the last several years, wetresins have mostly enabled paper manufacturers to take the paper to that application usage where it was never thought to be used before. Such as, now you can find it as a substitute for coolers (beverage cases), as a substitute for fabric (paper towels), and as a substitute for plastic (lawn bags).

Amid from other wetstrength resin, Polyamide Epichlorohydrin (PAE) has been effectively used in paper production for many years, which has replaced the older techniques to retain paper strength when the paper, board, towel, tissue, or specialized content is wetted. As technology has evolved, significant changes in wet strength resin chemicals quality in the industry have always been a question of fine-tuning.

A Big Evolution In Wet Strength Resins Usage

Over the decades, PAE’s wet strength resin chemical has gradually evolved from low-efficiency, low solids resins to today’s 20-30% solids, highly effective products. Moreover, this is made possible with research efforts that brought incredible results with small changes in solids, cost, stability, and performance.

This R&D initiative has subsequently succeeded because of the mushrooming technology that focused on a variety of advances that made it go beyond the gradual improvement in wet resin technologies commonly seen in the industry.

All such innovations have been merged into a new variant of PAE wet strength resin chemicals for paper, operationally referred to it as the Ultra 25 Amres ® wetstrength resin.

This technique is gained from the use of new raw materials and innovative production techniques, which have ended in significant increase in output and quality relative to even the greatest substitute wetstrength resin.

Why Wet Strength Resins Are So Important For Papermaking?

Worldwide use of wet-strength resins is reported to be between 400000 and 500000 tons each year, with a value of approximately US$ 470 million. For instance, wet-strength resins are an essential category amid papermaking chemicals.

However, wet strength resin chemical induces a significant improvement in the physical properties of the paper. Its resilience in the dry condition and its ability to crumble while wet, simply enhances the consistency of the paper. 

They are thus only used for a portion of the overall production of paper, but that still corresponds to 4-5 percent of all paper manufactured or 10 million tons each year.

Resins are the most widely used agents. There are two methods to improve the wetstrength of paper.

• • One is ‘protective mechanism’. This ensures that the resins shape a shielding network all over the fibers, which then keeps the bonding from splitting apart.

• • Another is ‘enhancement mechanism,’ which augment the strength of the fiber network.