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The production of chemical pulp in recent times is 180 million tons per year; while the production of eucalyptus pulp has increased intensively, especially in the southern hemisphere. The pulp and paper industry has long been considered a large consumer of natural resources (wood and water) and one of the largest sources of pollution to the environment (air, water courses and soil). Important efforts are being made to reduce the pollutant levels and water consumption of the industry. The wastewater composition, and therefore, the efficiency of effluent treatments and characteristics of the discharges to water are strongly dependent on the applied technology and raw materials. Despite a large body of literature on softwood-based wastewater, few studies have examined the characteristics of kraft eucalyptus bleaching effluents and their behaviour in the different biological treatments. The largest secondary treatment systems today use the activated sludge process. Sixty to seventy-five per cent of all the biological effluent treatment plants within the pulp and paper industry use this kind of treatment system. This chapter reviews the current pulping technologies at mills and compares the chemical composition and biological treatment of wastewater between softwood and hardwood bleached pulps.

BACKGROUND: Release of mercury from fluorescent lamps must be minimized to avoid its hazardous effects on human beings and other living organisms. Because of this, increasing attention is given to the improvement of existing techniques for its recovery as well as the development of new ones. This paper describes the application of heterogeneous photocatalysis for the selective reduction of mercury from fluorescent lamps. The whole process involves mercury chemical extraction using aqueous solutions of sodium hypochlorite. After pH adjustment of the resulting aqueous solution, the photocatalytic reduction of mercury is performed in the presence of titanium dioxide and citric acid as an auxiliary organic agent.

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