Some process aspects on single-stage bisulfite pulping of pine

Sulfite pulping of pine is well-known to be a risky process because problematic lignin condensation reactions can occur resulting in poor pulp quality. However, sulfite pulping of pine is interesting of economic reasons as pine wood is cheaper than spruce. Therefore it has become interesting to investigate sulfite pulping again to determine if old data are still valid. Thus sodium bisulfite pulping of pine was carried out to investigate the influence of time, temperature and cooking acid quality. A small comparison of spruce pulping was also included. By using different cooking temperatures the activation energies for delignification and for degradation of cellulose and hemicelluloses could be determined. The results showed no lignin condensation reactions, thus it was not problematic to carry out these pine cooking experiments. It was found that glucomannan had higher activation energy than xylan and the activation energies of these hemicelluloses were lower than the corresponding value for the lignin degradation. It was found that the activation energy for bisulfite pulping of pine was slightly lower than the activation energy for bisulfite pulping of spruce.