The second purpose is to efficiently collect the paint solids that were sprayed into the system and remove them from the water for disposal.
[2] Detackifiers reduce the tackiness of pitch-like materials or stickies so that they have less tendency to form agglomerates or deposit onto papermaking equipment or create spots in the product.
These two attributes, softness and hydrophobicity are easy to observe when one pinches some talcum powder and then releases it onto the surface of water in a sink.
The common feature of these chemicals is that they are weak polyelectrolytes (sometimes cationic), and they have a tendency to form a film at the surface of tacky or hydrophobic suspended matter.
It makes sense also to use an effective retention aid program in order to retain the talc (and any attached tacky materials), purging the problem from the wet-end system.
Several major papermaking research groups have equipment for lab-scale simulation of pitch and stickies problems.