Influence of Fiber Scale Heterogeneity on Softwood Kraft Pulp Kappa Uniformity, 2006 Engineering, Pulping, & Environmental Conference

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Soft wood miniature chips were cooked with very mild conditions to investigate the underlying kappa heterogeneity of kraft pulp. These pulps had Gaussian single fiber kappa distributions with coefficients of variation of 16%. They did not have the high kappa tails seen in soft woodpulps produced with conventional kraft pulping. Pulping early woodand late wood together resulted in a moderately broader, but still Gaussian, single fiber kappa distribution. The nonuniformity in these pulps is believed to result from fiber scale heterogeneity within the wood. These pulps represent the limit in uniformity that can be achieved with kraft pulping of softwood.