Journal of Environmental Biology

An environmentally friendly organosolv (ethanol-water) pulping of poplar wood

 

Mehmet Akgul*¹ and Huseyin Kirci²

¹Department of Forest Products Engineering, Faculty of Forestry, Duzce University , Duzce - 81620, Turkey

²Department of Forest Products Engineering, Faculty of Forestry, Karadeniz Technical University,? Trabzon - 61080, Turkey

(Received: June 23, 2006; Revised received: June 10, 2008; Accepted: July 05, 2008)

 

Abstract: In this study, pulp production from the fast growing plant, poplar, was examined for organosolv pulping with or without catalysts. In order to find the optimum cooking conditions, 18 different cooking experiments were carried out. The effect of ethanol ratio, cooking time as well as catalyst was studied. It was observed that even at lower temperature (90^oC), cooking without catalyst was able to cause sufficient defiberization. It was seen that the increasing proportion of catalyst and cooking temperature resulted in an increased delignification. However in the case of using 0.02% acid catalyst pulp yield and viscosity were lowered to an unacceptable level. The most important cooking factors were found to be the proportion of acid catalyst. Furthermore, the delignification performance was found to be depending on the pH of the black liquor. In a result, the optimum pulp properties were obtained by cooking at 180^oC for 90 min with 50 % ethanol mixture without catalyst. The pulp yield was noted as 44.49 %, viscosity was 892 cm² g^-1 and the kappa number was 67. ^??

Key words: Poplar, Organosolv pulping, Delignification, Ethanol-water cooking, pH

 

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