Product Description
Kamyr Inc., the U.S. arm of the Swedish digester-technology licensor, supplied continuous kraft-cooking digester systems to the U.S. kraft pulp industry from the 1950s onward, becoming the dominant continuous-digester design in the American South and Pacific Northwest. Plaintiffs alleged in publicly filed U.S. asbestos personal-injury and wrongful-death litigation that Kamyr digester installations relied on chrysotile asbestos packing in the seat rings of the digester blow-valves — the high-differential-pressure valves that discharge cooked kraft pulp to the blow tank — and that the top-separator and impregnation-vessel sections were insulated with asbestos-fabric lagging blankets to retain cooking-liquor temperature.
According to publicly filed allegations, this asbestos configuration was carried forward across Kamyr continuous-cooking installations from the 1950s through the early 1980s and appeared in bleached-kraft mills throughout the U.S. Gulf Coast, Southeast, and Pacific Northwest.
Workers Exposed
Publicly filed asbestos complaints have allegedly identified the following trades as exposed to Kamyr digester materials:
- Pulp mill digester cooks monitoring blow-valves and cooking liquor recirculation
- Blow-tank operators working the discharge side during blow-valve teardown
- Paper mill millwrights repacking blow-valve seats and rebuilding valve bonnets
- Kraft recovery-boiler firemen adjacent during turnaround steam-line breaks
- Pulp mill maintenance mechanics tearing off and rewrapping top-separator lagging
- Insulators and pipe coverers applying asbestos-fabric blanket lagging on the digester upper vessel