Perfecting Wheat Straw Pulp

Pulp made from wheat straw is commonly used in countries like China and Turkey where trees are in short supply. With the growing push for environmentally sustainable products, pulp and paper manufacturers in North America are also interested in wheat straw.

 

Over the last decade, Wade Chute and his colleagues at the Alberta Research Council have been looking at how wheat straw pulp could meet our market demands for brightness and strength. He is the team leader for pulp and paper in the Forest Products Business Unit at the ARCl.

As Chute explains, “In China they will cook wheat straw to a higher yield, so they will remove less of the lignan. As a result they will bleach to a lower brightness. The lower brightness and the higher yield basically saves them money, but it is more than enough to achieve the paper objectives that they have there. In North America, we seem to have this fascination with ultra high bright, ultra white, ultra pure printing and writing papers and that necessitates that you cook to a much, much lower yield. It also implies that you use a lot more bleach. So the straw pulp that’s produced in China right now, they just cook it and bleach it a little bit differently.”

Chute says ARC’s pilot plant is now processing a wheat straw pulp that could meet the high standards of North American pulp and paper makers. What’s needed, however, is access to a full size pulping line to demonstrate that wheat straw pulp can be produced in commercial quantities. √                                                                         ~Cheryl Croucher

 www.arc.ab.ca

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Tags: Edmonton Technology, Edmontonians Visionaries, Wade Chute, Wheat Straw Pulp

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