KRAFT AND KRAFT/AQ PULPING FROM PREHIDROLYZED WOOD OF HYBRID Eucalyptus urophylla x grandis

Abstract

The wood of the gender Eucalyptus occupies a prominence place among other cellulose sources due to its chemical composition, its low cost, abundance and availability. Among the chemical pulping processes, kraft process is the most extensively one used for the production of cellulosic pulps starting from eucalyptus wood. The anthraquinone (AQ) usage in the pulping has as main purposes to increase the delignification rate as well as to protect the pulp from the carbohydrate degradation. The present work has aimed to use the anthraquinone as an addictive in the cooking seeking to reduce the load of applied sulphidity without harming the quality of the pulp. The kraft and kraft/AQ cooking were accomplished in rotative laboratorial digester being varied the active alkali initially (10, 13, 16 and 19%) and, later, the sulphidity (5, 10, 15, 20 and 25%), maintaining the other conditions constant aiming to obtain pulp with kappa number close to nine. Starting from the variation of the active alkali and of the sulphidity, delignification curves were established between active alkali and kappa number and, sulphidity and kappa number, where it was possible to establish the minimum necessary amounts of alkali, as well as of the sulphidity. Starting from the cooking, it was possible to establish the active alkali and sulphidity loads of 17,4% and 8,8%, respectively. The cooking to the certain conditions presented screened yield of 48,63%, and the yield based on the initial mass of wood was of 42,24%, obtaining a high quality pulp, in other words, with low number kappa and hemicelluloses tenor (0,41%) and high tenor of alpha cellulose (98,49%).