Airlaid is a different process from hammermill fluff: fiber is opened, formed on a moving wire with air, and bonded. The pulp has to defibrate cleanly and form uniformly, or the whole line slows down.
Application Overview
Airlaid nonwovens are produced by defibrating pulp, entraining the fiber in an air stream, depositing it on a forming wire, and bonding the web thermally, chemically or with latex. The result is a dense, uniform absorbent sheet used in wipes, tabletop products, food pads and absorbent cores.
Because the web is formed from airborne fiber rather than a hammermill fluff, the critical pulp properties are different. Fiber opening behaviour, fines content and fiber length distribution dominate; bulk matters less than uniformity.
High fines content is the most common cause of airlaid quality problems — it deposits unevenly, blinds the forming wire, and creates dust that contaminates the line.
Product Formats We Support
Airlaid Wipes
Dense, uniform webs for wet and dry wipe products
Tabletop & Napkins
Absorbent airlaid for food service applications
Food Pads
Absorbent pads for meat and produce packaging
Absorbent Cores
Airlaid cores for hygiene products
Medical Airlaid
Absorbent airlaid for clinical single-use articles
Composite Structures
Airlaid combined with SAP or nonwoven layers
Typical Requirements and Our Approach
| Requirement | Typical Target | How We Meet It |
|---|---|---|
| Defibration quality | Clean opening, minimal unopened knots | Controlled sheet formation and debonding system |
| Fines content | Below 6% (200 mesh) | Multi-stage screening; fines reported per batch |
| Fiber length | 2.2–2.8 mm average, narrow distribution | Narrow distribution forms more uniform webs |
| Formation uniformity | No visible streaks or density bands | Consistent fiber length and low fines reduce air-stream segregation |
| Web strength | Adequate for bonding and winding | Long fiber fraction provides web integrity before bonding |
| Line cleanliness | Low dust accumulation | Low fines reduces dust and wire blinding |
Airlaid requirements differ from hammermill fluff requirements. Specify the process, not just the product.
Detailed Description
Why fines matter more here
In a hammermill line, fines are a dust nuisance. In an airlaid line, fines are a forming problem. Fine particles have different aerodynamic behaviour from long fibers, so they deposit in different places — creating density bands, blinding the wire, and reducing web uniformity.
The practical symptom is a web that looks acceptable but fails on absorption uniformity or basis weight consistency. By then the problem is usually several batches old.
Ask for the fines distribution, not just the fines percentage. A pulp with 5% fines concentrated in the finest fraction forms worse than one with 6% spread more evenly.
Fiber length distribution beats average length
Two pulps with the same average fiber length can form very different webs if their distributions differ. A narrow distribution deposits uniformly; a wide one segregates in the air stream. Specify the distribution, and ask for the data that shows it.
Working with bonding systems
Thermal bonding relies on bicomponent fiber; latex bonding relies on binder distribution through the web. Both are affected by how evenly the pulp fiber is deposited. A pulp that forms well gives the bonding system a uniform substrate to work with, which usually allows a lower binder add-on at the same strength.
