Yield Increase with Softwood Kraft Biopulp, 2000 Pulping / Process & Product Quality Conference Proceedings

J. G. Molina, J. E. Donoso, R. Garay, C. Valenzuela--Typical industrial logs of Radiata pine were treated with white rot fungi: Pleurotus sp. The treatment was separated from another group considered as a control group. The treatment had three development periods for the fungal action and the mean moisture level of logs was 80%. During the trial, and in order to know the evolution of chemical composition of the wood, classic determinations were made for lignin, cellulose, hemicellulose and extractants. As a response of this treatment, the following characteristics and properties were evaluated: yield, Kappa index and viscosity. Based on chemical characterization, it was found that for Radiata pine, Pleurotus sp has an effective delignification power and with more residual hemicellulose. For biopulp from treated logs, the viscosity was a little higher than for the control samples. In biopulps, for higher yields, the Kappa index is lower, and that means that bleaching could be less intensive and contamination indexes decrease.