Patent ID: 8888954

Claim:
A method for feeding wood chips to a continuous digester, comprising, feeding wood chips into a vessel having a rotatable bottom scraper at a bottom of the vessel, suspending the wood chips in the vessel to create a chips suspension; arranging at least two single pumps in parallel connected directly to the bottom of the vessel, the two single pumps having no pump serially connected thereto upstream or downstream thereof, the bottom scraper rotating to break up a column of chips descending in the vessel, a stirrer, in operative engagement with the bottom scraper, sweeping over outlets at the bottom of the vessel to keep the chips suspension in motion and substantially evenly distributing the chips suspension between the outlets in communication with the two pumps, each pump transferring the chips suspension in a transfer line extending from the vessel to the top of a digester, cooking the wood chips in the digester to form a pulp, and continuously feeding out pulp from a bottom of the digester.