ABSTRACT:The effect of increasing the pulp yield by the addition of sodium borohydride (NaBH 4 ) or polysulfide (PS) in softwood kraft cooking, i.e. enhancing the retention of glucomannan, on the physical properties of low-grammage handsheets was studied. In addition to the yield improvement, an increase in tensile index was observed, especially at lower degrees of beating. These higher yield pulps showed an increase in pore volume, indicating an increased degree of swelling of the fibres. Presumably, the increased flexibility of the fibres affects the bonding strength and leads to the higher tensile index observed.
AbstractRecently, a new type of bleaching sequence, Elemental Chlorine Free (ECF) light with one D stage, has been developed. It combines the efficiency and high selectivity of chlorine dioxide (ClO2) bleaching with more environmental friendly oxygen based bleaching chemicals. This work examines the effect of pH on the formation of adsorbable organically bound halogens (AOX) in an intermediate D stage – a single ClO2 stage at the middle of an ECF light bleaching sequence. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is used to generate a bicarbonate buffer in situ, stabilizing the pH during the bleaching. Near-neutral pH is hypothesized to decrease the formation of strongly chlorinating species, so that the AOX formation is reduced. The results indicate that a near-neutral pH D stage can reduce the AOX content in the effluents with up to 30%. The ISO brightness was unchanged to a lower ClO2 consumption. The pulp viscosity was slightly higher after near-neutral pH D stage, but to its disadvantage a lesser delignification and removal of HexA was obtained. The degradation of HexA correlated well with the AOX, affirming earlier theories that HexA has a major impact on the AOX formation. The higher amounts of residual HexA and lignin resulted in more thermal yellowing of the pulps bleached with a near-neutral pH D stage.
Previous paper (Rahman et al. 2017) showed that the yield of softwood kraft pulp increased by the addition of either polysulfide or sodium borohydride because of higher hemicellulose retention. An increase in hemicellulose content can make dewatering more difficult as WRV of the pulp increases, but instead, an overall increase in pulp yield could improve dewatering as a sheet of a certain weight will contain fewer fibres, giving a more open sheet structure. It was therefore of interest to measure the dewatering properties of low grammage handsheets (20 g/m2) under conditions mimicking the tissue paper machine dewatering processes, and sheet strength properties, WRV, °SR and fibre dimensions were also studied. The results showed that the positive influence of overall yield increase dominated over the negative influence of an increase in hemicellulose content on the dewatering properties, particularly at lower refining energy levels. Moreover, higher yield and higher hemicellulose content pulps had a higher tensile index at the same dryness. A given tensile index was achieved with less refining energy. The results indicate that increased yield and hemicellulose content by modification of the kraft pulping process will result in a pulp with a potential to improve tissue paper quality.
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