Avoiding total reduced sulfur (TRS) emissions from sodium sulfite pulping recovery processes

This paper reports that one of the current trends in paper-making with cellulose pulping is the use of high-yield processes. With yields greater than 65%, these processes include mechanical pulps (groundwood and thermomechanical pulps or TMP), and semichemical types (chemi-TMP or CTMP). Groundwood and TMP make up about 10% of North American pulp production. Semichemical pulp makes up about 7% and is mostly used for corrugating medium. High-yield pulping for linerboard, particularly using the alkaline sulfite process, is also likely to be used in the future. High-yield pulping is based primarily on the sulfite process using mostly sodium-based chemicals. A disadvantage of this process is the unavailability of a recovery system for the inorganic pulping chemicals. Generally, mills have not accepted any particular recovery system for this process. For this and other reasons, sulfite processes constitute only 3-4% of the total North American pulp production. If high-yield processes continue to increase in popularity, a sodium sulfite chemical recovery system will be needed. A number of chemical recovery systems have been developed in the past 30 years for sodium-based sulfite pulping processes, with most of the mills successfully using this process located in Scandinavia.