Several sulfite and sulfate pulps ranging in yield from about 80 to 47% have been prepared from fir and birch wood chips (Table 2 and 3), and their compositions, caustic soda solubilities and degree of polymerization of hemicellulose have been compared.
1. Since considerable amount of cellulose and mannan (or glucomannan) are removed from sulfate pulps at the beginning of cooking (Fig. 3), the pulps are generally lower in yield compared with sulfite pulps at the equal chlorine number (Fig. 2). Only hardwood sulfate pulps at chlorine number below about 6 are, however, higher in yield than sulfite pulp at the equal chlorine number, because a large amount of xylan remains in sulfate pulp, especially that of hardwood, even with much progress of cooking.
2. Sulfite pulps are usually higher in polysaccharide extracted with caustic soda solution at low concentration, compared with sulfate pulps at the equal unbleached pulp yield (Fig. 4).
3. Degree of polymerization of hemicellulose decreases a little during the sulfate cooking, while much during the sulfite cooking, especially at the beginning of cooking. In sulfite cooking, it reaches about a half even in high yield range such as 70% (Table 4, 5 and Fig. 5).
In a mild sulfite cooking of birch bleached sulfate pulp, degree of polymerization of hemicellulose decreases about 20%, and the resulted pulps are greatly reduced in bursting strength, especially tearing strength, than original pulp, in spite of a little change in other properties, such as pulp yield, degree of polymerization of total carbohydrate, solubility in 5% sodium hydroxide solution, fiber strength and fiber length (Table 8 and Fig. 7).
These results show probably that there are remarkable differences in swellability and strength of a bond between sulfite and sulfate pulps even at higher range of pulp yield.
It has been found, moreover, that degrees of polymerization of hemicelluloses decrease little during the usual bleaching processes of both sulfite and sulfate pulps (Table 7).
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