Preliminary Study on Organosolv Pulping of Acacia Hybrid

An attempt was made on pulp production from the fast growing plant, Acacia hybrid to determine the total yield, screened yield, Kappa number, and fibre morphology of organosolv Acacia hybrid pulp. Uniform-sized chips were taken to undergo pulping in a digester with five different concentrations of ethanol, 50%, 60%, 70%, 80% and 90% (v/v) with 1 M of sodium hydroxide as catalyst. All chips were digested in a temperature-controlled digester with constant amount of water added and temperature of $185^{\circ}C$ with the duration of three hours cooking time and correspond pressure 1.1-1.2 MPa. It was observed that increasing of ethanol concentration has led to pulp yield increment and decreased in the degree of delignification at the same time. This study was aimed to focus on the effect of the varied concentration of organic solvent towards the pulp yield and its relationship with Kappa number and pulp yield.