Development of bio-mechanical rice straw pulp by high consistency kneader with thermal and Alkaline

Yu-Hsun Lai; Hao-Chen Sun; Ming-Hui Chang; Ching-Chin Li; Jiann-Gwo Shyu; Yuan-Shing Perng

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e19317

Development of bio-mechanical rice straw pulp by high consistency kneader with thermal and Alkaline

Heliyon. 2023 Aug 24;9(9):e19317. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e19317. eCollection 2023 Sep.

Authors

Yu-Hsun Lai¹, Hao-Chen Sun¹, Ming-Hui Chang², Ching-Chin Li², Jiann-Gwo Shyu³, Yuan-Shing Perng¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Forestry, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung 40227, Taiwan, ROC.
² Agricultural Chemistry Division, Taiwan Agricultural Research Institute, Taichung 41362, Taiwan, ROC.
³ Forest Productsm Utilization Division, Taiwan Forestry Research Institute, Taipei 100051, Taiwan, ROC.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop a bio-mechanical pulp from rice straw with thermal and low chemical dosage. The process is carried out by thermal alkali kneading pretreatment (0-5% NaOH) with a high concentration kneader, enzyme pretreatment (0.2-4%) and Hollander beater. The results showed that the addition of NaOH was the main factor affecting the properties of pulp and paper, and the best properties of straw pulp could be obtained when NaOH and enzyme dosage were 5% and 0.2%, respectively. Although the optimum rice straw pulp is inferior to straw soda pulp in terms of tensile, burst and ring crush index, it is superior to old corrugated cardboard pulp and partially meets the CNS standards of corrugated medium paper and linerboard without the addition of chemicals. Therefore, the bio-mechanical rice straw pulp in this study has the potential to be produced as industrial paper.

Keywords: Bio-mechanical rice straw pulp; Enzyme pretreatment; High concentration kneader; Hollander beater; Thermal-alkali pretreatment.