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Synchronous silicon removal and viscosity reduction in the soda-oxygen pulping of wheat straw

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Abstract

The black liquor (BL) obtained by straw pulping can hardly be applied to conventional alkali recovery systems because of its high concentration of silicon and viscosity. Soda-oxygen pulping can synchronously deposit silica on the surface of the cellulose to reduce the silicon content and viscosity of BL remarkably. In this paper, the BLs of wheat straw soda-oxygen pulping obtained at different end points (pH < 10, 11.5 < pH < 12) and conventional soda-anthraquinone (soda-AQ) were obtained. The extent of silicon removal and viscosity reduction before and after centrifugation or membrane filtration as well as the thermodynamic properties of the BLs were investigated. Compared with that achieved by soda-AQ, over 45% silicon was removed from BL after soda-oxygen cooking at a similar delignification level. The total solid (TS) concentration of the soda-oxygen BL was easily concentrated by up to approximately 50%. SiO2 can be further removed by simple centrifugation and membrane filtration, and its TS could be increased to 60% at 300 mp s. With cooking end point further decreased pH < 10, the centrifugated BL had the lowest silica content, the highest volumetric isothermal expansivity (VIE) value, and the lowest pyrolysis temperature.

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Acknowledgments

This study was financially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21908127 and No. 21838006), National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2018YFC1902101), and the Project Supported by the Foundation (No. KF201810) of Key Laboratory of Pulp and Paper Science and Technology of Ministry of Education/Shandong Province of China.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Hengyu Xu, Lilong Zhang & Yulong Wu

  2. School of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Xinjiang University, Xinjiang, 830046, China

    Hengyu Xu & Yulong Wu

  3. Faculty of Chemical Engineering, Kunming University of Science and Technology, Kunming, 650500, China

    Keli Chen & Lilong Zhang

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  1. Hengyu Xu
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  2. Keli Chen
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Correspondence to Lilong Zhang or Yulong Wu.

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Xu, H., Chen, K., Zhang, L. et al. Synchronous silicon removal and viscosity reduction in the soda-oxygen pulping of wheat straw. Cellulose 28, 9081–9089 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-021-04078-0

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