It is difficult to cook larch wood with the conventional Ca-base sulfite digestion process, and the pulp obtained is yellow under the influence of flavanon in the heartwood.
In recent years, with the advancements of the sulfite cooking method, comparatively new methods such as the Arbiso, the Magnefite, the Sivola, the Stora, the Kramfors and the Weyer haeuser digestion have been developed.
With these methods, it is not difficult to pulp woods which have been considered not suitable for pulping. However, even with the above mentioned processes, pulps produced were not free from yellowing derived from flavanon in the heartwood of larch.
We developed the new successful two-stage sulfite pulping method; in stage 1, the wood was treated with sulfite solution at pH 811 at 150180°C and then most of the liquor were drawn off. In stage 2, the contents were cooked with dilute SO
2 solution at higher maximum temperature to the final pH 1.02.5.
Higher brightness without yellowing was obtained with this pulping method resulting in a very low PN and a low ether-extract, and the pulp was easy to refine with good strength properties.
View full abstract