Treesearch

Researchers at the Forest Product Laboratory (FPL) and the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW) envision a future for biofuels based on biomass gasification with hydrogen enrichment. Synergisms between hydrogen production and biomass gasification technologies will be necessary to avoid being marginalized in the biofuel marketplace. Five feasible engineering solutions have been suggested for this synergism. We are researching one solution to investigate cleaner and more-efficient wood gasification via high-temperature liquid metal as a carrier fluid and making use of hydrogen, power, and...

An analysis of the effectiveness of anthraquinone (AQ) in kraft-AQ pulping in terms of its mechanism of transport has been conducted. Our previous work showed that caustic solutions of wood lignin can decrease the membrane exclusion for anthraquinones, i.e., the presence of wood lignin enhances the ability of AQ to pass through a membrane when a reducing agent is present in the acceptor stream. This work seeks to demonstrate that a similar behavior may occur during pulping. The adsorption behavior of AQ species was analyzed, and it was shown that anthraquinone-2-sulfonic acid (AQ-S), a...

This method describes a procedure to determine hexeneuronic acid groups (HexA) in chemical pulps. HexA affects the kappa number determination by reaction with permanganate, and can react with certain bleaching chemicals, e.g. chlorine dioxide and ozone, but not with some others such as oxygen and peroxide. The method is based on the highly selective hydrolysis of HexA from a pulp sample in a mercuric chloridesodium acetate solution. Complete hydrolysis of HexA from pulps is achieved within 30 minutes by choosing the appropriate hydrolysis conditions (the concentration of the hydrolysis...

Fibers that acquire a Z-direction tilt in the forming process help bond adjacent strata of the paper sheet, increasing Z-direction shear and other properties. For certain tests, this manifests itself as a test difference upon 180° in-plane rotation of the sheet. Seven of eight different paper grades ranging in grammage from 73 to 268 g/m2 were found to show this difference for Scott internal bond tests, directional brightness tests, or both. Directional effects were compared using an extensional and a shear metric. One-third of comparisons showed significant directional effects at the...

New technologies in building materials have resulted in the use of a wide variety of materials in decks. As part of our effort to address fire concerns in the wildland-urban interface, the Forest Products Laboratory has been examining the fire performance of decking products. In addition to preservative-treated wood, decking products include wood-plastic composites and imported wood species. Requirements for wood-plastic composites are often based on expectation for untreated wood. Claims for imported wood species have included Class A flame spread ratings. This paper discusses results of...

Pulp and paper are converted to paper products with yields of paper dependent on the wood and the process used. Even with high yield pulps there are conversion losses and with chemical pulps the yields approach 50%. The portions of the wood that do not provide product are either combusted to generate power and steam or incur a cost in waste water treatment. Value prior to pulping is an approach to pulping that tries to recover the carbohydrate components that do not enter the paper product before the pulping process has been started. We describe here an approach that releases hemicellulosic...