Pilot Coating Center:
Experience and technical support
Our Pilot Coating Center underlines BASF's commitment to the paper and board industry. Its technical infrastructure allows us to simulate and optimize customer processes ‒ from paper coating to printing.
Our customers and interested third parties can benefit from our excellent experience and technical infrastructure. State-of-the-art equipment, operated by our highly skilled team, facilitates the safe and efficient transfer of technical solutions from lab to paper mill. Under realistic conditions, we test tailor-made concepts together with clients by replicating their production processes for further product optimization. Our Pilot Coating Center enables the efficient transfer of technical solutions, new product developments and optimized recipes while reducing risk and off-spec material. This saves our customers time and money, leading to positive and lasting business relationships.
In our Pilot Coating Center, we can simulate almost all common application methods used by our customers.
Industry insights
The benefits of the Pilot Coating Center
Starting Point
We facilitate the startup of new coating machines geared towards individual requirements and assist in cases of machine modifications. As an example, in the development of new paper and board qualities, we evaluate individual stages of the production process and/or optimize coating recipes.
Solution Finding
Our state-of-the-art pilot coater enables us to simulate the specific process in the mill. This means we can trouble shoot in the areas of processes, coating colors and final paper parameters e.g. printability.
Innovative Optimizer
Realistic simulations in our Pilot Coating Center that come close to industrial scale provide valuable knowledge for the optimized use of coating chemicals. The choice of the right products helps our customers in such feasibility studies to transfer the gathered results into their own processes and minimizes the risk of failure.
Pilot Coating Center
Our Pilot Coating Center comprises of two coaters (smaller pilot coater SM1 and semi-industrial pilot coater SM2), coating color preparation, supercalendering, rewinding and sheet cutting and lab facilities for measurements.
The facility is primarily used to further develop existing coating colors and to demonstrate the performance of BASF products. We are able to carry out tailor-made concepts together with our customers under almost realistic conditions by simulating their production process.
At our pilot coater, we offer all industry-standard coating application methods, including application roll / blade & rod, jet / blade and filmpress. Recently we expanded our application systems by investing in a new curtain coater to strengthen our coating expertise and increase our strategic focus on packaging applications.
Click through the Pilot Coater Machine
Pilot coater 1
The pilot coater SM 1 is primarily used for screening trials. It can be operated at a speed of up to 150 m/min. It is equipped with an application roll system using blade and rod as well as an air knife system. The substrate is dried via hot air and can be cooled down with a cooling cylinder. Compared to the SM 2, the SM 1 requires much smaller amounts of raw material.
Paper testing laboratory
We are equipped with all common paper and coating color testing equipment, including various analytical measuring devices.
Coating color preparation
The coating colors for the trials are mixed on site. All necessary preparation facilities are available, including options for dispersing pigments at variable shear rates and preparing starch solutions with both batch and jet cookers.
De-Aerator (Curtain Coater)
With this de-aerator, it is possible to simply remove micronized gas and air pockets of liquids with different viscosities, using the VTR principle (Vacuum-Thin layer-Rotational procedure). This is mandatory for the curtain coating process, producing a defect free surface.
Supercalender
A 12-roll supercalender enhances sheet smoothness and gloss development. The calender provides gloss and smoothness by varying temperature, pressure and speed. The final moisture is measured with an infrared device. The paper gloss is determined online for both sides.
Read more about the Supercalender
Rewinder
The rewinder is used for cutting the paper reels, wrapped and prepared for transportation.
Sheet cutter
The sheet cutter is used to provide paper samples in the size for lab and printing tests according to customer needs.
Printing
BASF has access to commercial printing houses with all relevant printing methods.
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