High Yield and Easy Bleachability -The ASAM Process, 1998 Breaking the Pulp Yield Barrier Symposium Proceedings

High yield and easy bleachability are always good arguments for a pulping technology especially if these two advantages are linked to Kraft-like or better pulp properties. But how can you prove to your clients that your claim to offer the best technology is really true?

Everyone in the pulp and paper industry working with wood or lignocellulosic raw materials knows that the difficulties start with the supply of the raw material, continue with their storage, and end with the selection of the best pulping method. Therefore it is always difficult to verify the advantages of a new technology.

The easiest way to demonstrate these advantages would be to offer a process which could improve existing quality grades and pulp performance significantly. The ASAM process is a technology which meets this challenge. Based on its documented quality improvements and more favorable economics the ASAM process was declared by Jaakko Pöyry to be the only feasible alternative to the leading Kraft technology (1).

For a certain period of time, however, it had appeared as if the modified Kraft technology was the best answer to all of the environmental and technological problems of conventional Kraft pulping caused by poor bleaching behavior. Suddenly it was possible to delignify to very low Kappa numbers and TCF Kraft pulp bleaching seemed to be the technology of the future. But modifying the Kraft technology does not change its basic functioning. It only extended delignification further.Today it seems obvious that only a major change in pulping technology will provide the potential to overcome the limitations of the Kraft technology and enable the pulp consumers to upgrade their previous products and create new ones. The ASAM process is a feasible way to do this.