Hollander Beater

A Hollander beater is a machine developed by the Dutch in 1680 to produce paper pulp from cellulose containing plant fibers. It replaced stamp mills for preparing pulp because the Hollander could produce in one day the same quantity of pulp it would take a stamp mill eight days to prepare.

However, the wooden paddles and beating process of a stamp mill produced longer, more easily hydrated, and more fibrillated cellulose fibers; thus increasing the resulting paper's strength. The Hollander used metal blades and a chopping action to cut the raw material, resulting in shorter cellulose fibers and weaker paper. Further, the metal blades of the Hollander often introduced metal contaminants into the paper as one metal blade struck another. These contaminants often acted as catalysts for oxidation that have been implicated in foxing.

In turn, the Hollander was (partially) replaced by the Jordan, invented in 1858, which ground the raw materials like a huge coffee-grinder.

A Hollander beater design consists of a circular or ovoid water raceway with a beater wheel at a single point along the raceway. The beater wheel is made with multiple "blades" mounted on an axle-like shaft, similar to the construction of a water wheel. Under power, the blades rotate to beat the fiber into a usable pulp slurry.

The objective of using a beater (rather than some other process like grinding, as many wood-pulp mills do) is to create longer, hydrated, fibrillated fibers. (Fibrillated fibers are abraded to the extent that many partially broken-off fibers extend from the main fiber, increasing the fiber's surface area, and therefore its potential for hydrogen bonding). Grinding of fibers is not desirable. Therefore, the "blades" are not what you might think of as "sharpened," and well-designed beaters will make it possible to minimize the shear action of the rotating blades against the bottom of the water raceway.