DISSOLVING PULP FROM NON-WOOD PLANTS BY PREHYDROLYSISPOTASSIUM HYDROXIDE PROCESS

The garment industry is the backbone of Bangladesh’s economy, which imports 30000 metric tons of rayon fiber every year. Bangladesh used to have a rayon plant, but it was shut down a long time ago. At present, the establishment of a new rayon plant in Bangladesh has become an objective. As a forest deficient country, non-wood plants need to be explored for rayon grade dissolving pulp production. Therefore, in this paper, prehydrolysis potassium hydroxide (KOH) pulping process has been investigated for dissolving pulp production from rice and wheat straws, corn stalk, dhaincha and jute stick. The lowest prehydrolysis yield was 70.1% obtained for corn stalks and the highest prehydrolysis yield was 92.1% for wheat straw. The KOH cooking of prehydrolysed rice straw, wheat straw and corn stalks with 14% alkali charge produced pulps with kappa numbers of 5.7, 4.5 and 8.8, respectively, while prehydrolysed dhaincha and jute stick needed 18% alkali charge to get a bleachable pulp. Dhaincha showed the highest pulp yield (37.3%) with the highest α-cellulose content (92.24%) and the lowest residual pentosan content (5.37%). Further purification with cold KOH extraction increased purity by 3% for rice straw pulp and by 1% for dhaincha, wheat straw, corn stalks and jute stick pulp. Thus, the dissolving pulp produced in this study by the prehydrolysis KOH process can meet the criteria for rayon grade pulp.