Arne Asplund Mechanical Pulping Award 2007 granted to Dr. Esko Härkönen

Published Mar 8, 2007 11.00.00 +2 GMT

The Arne Asplund Mechanical Pulping Award 2007 has been granted to Dr. Esko Härkönen from UPM Research Center, Lappeenranta, Finland. The Arne Asplund Mechanical Pulping Award was established in 1985 to commemorate Dr. Asplund´s contribution to the pulp and paper industry worldwide. The award was made possible through a donation from the Sunds Defibrator of which became in 1991 a wholly owned unit within the Rauma group of Repola, the company preceding Metso Paper.

The award will be presented to Dr. Härkönen on May 8, at the International Mechanical Pulping Conference in Minneapolis City, USA. The award consists of a gold medal and a honorarium of SEK 25, 000.

Dr. Esko Härkönen has made many major contributions to the understanding of the fundamentals of mechanical pulping during his research career of some 35 years. He has been a pioneer in experimental work on full-scale, high consistency refiners. He was one of the first researchers to measure experimentally the residence time of wood fibers in a high consistency single disc pressurized refiner using radioactive tracing techniques. Härkönen has also developed theoretical models providing amongst other parameters the distribution of power dissipation throughout the refining zone of a TMP refiner.

Metso is a global engineering and technology corporation with 2005 net sales of approximately EUR 4.2 billion. Its 22,000 employees in more than 50 countries serve customers in the pulp and paper industry, rock and minerals processing, the energy industry, and selected other industries. www.metso.com

For more information, please contact:

Mats Ullmar, General Manager RTD, Mechanical Pulping, Metso Paper Tel. +46 6016 50 00 mats.ullmar@metso.com

Ulf Hellberg, Senior Vice President, Mechanical Pulping, Metso Paper Tel. +46 6016 50 00 ulf.hellberg@metso.com