Recovery of Co-Products from Nonwood Organosolv Pulping, 2000 Pulping / Process & Product Quality Conference Proceedings

E. K. Pye, R. Katzen--The commercial scale chemical pulping of nonwood materials has many difficulties compared to the chemical pulping of wood. The seasonal availability of the resource, the low packing density and the wide area of resource recovery, require nonwood chemical pulp mills to be significantly smaller than wood-based mills. Additionally, the technical problems created by the high inorganic content of many nonwood materials have limited the commercial development of nonwood chemical pulp mills. Except in countries having limited wood availability, such as China and India, these problems have sufficiently restricted the economic potential of nonwood pulp mills that few have been constructed. Organosolv pulping has attributes that can reverse this situation. With easy separation of silica and other non process elements from the cooking solvent, pure organosolv technology, as exemplified by the APR and the Alcell Processes, will operate economically on a far smaller scale than modern wood-based pulp mills. The easy recovery of saleable co-products from the pulping operations can increase the revenues and profitability of small nonwood pulp mills, making them economically and technically viable in most parts of the world.