Destructuring of Chips-a Concept of Optimum Utilization of Unpulpable Species

Abstract

Pulping experiments on Eucalyptus tuelicornis and Xylia xylocarpa were undertaken in the present study, Laboratory experiments revealed that destructuring has definite advantages in pulping, Pulps of lower kappa number, coupled with higber pulp yield and lower rejects could be obtained at identical conditions or pulping However, these advantages are more significant in the calie of X. xylocarpa as compared to E. tereticornis. This could be due to higher specific gravity of X. xylocarpa Mixture of (1:1) of destructured chips of E. terelicornis and X. xylocarpa along with control were pulped at optimum conditions, derived from preliminary pulping expriments, (17% active alkali, 25% sulpbidity and about 1100 H. factor). It was observed that the mixture of destructured chips produced pulp having lower rejects, about 2% higher screened pulp yield and 5 points lower kappa number. However the physical strengtb properties of pulp from destructured and control chips were almost the same. A prototype laboratory machine was designed and fabricated for the destructuring of chips.