Some Aspects on Pulp Pre-treatment Prior to Viscose Preparation

Abstract: Large amounts of carbon disulphide are consumed in the conventional production of viscose. Until a novel, eco-friendly, wood-based process for the production of cellulose textile fibres has been developed and implemented, it is important to try to find ways to improve the conventional viscose process, e.g. in terms of reducing the carbon disulphide requirement of the process. The aim of this thesis was to reduce the amount of carbon disulphide consumed in the preparation of high-viscosity viscose by pre-treating pulps with enzymes. It also aimed at investigating and linking the different measurements of reactivity, i.e. gamma number, Fock reactivity and Kw, and determining the sensitivity of the gamma number to the hemicellulose content of pulp. Reactivity was measured as Fock reactivity and gamma number. The gamma number of viscose solutions remained unchanged when an enzyme stage was used prior to the viscose process. The gamma number analysis was found to be selective not only to cellulose but also to the hemicellulosic material. It was verified that both cellulose and hemicellulose molecules in the pulp material were substituted in the viscose preparation stages, showing that the gamma number of the pulp is due to both substituted cellulose and substituted hemicelluloses. The mechanisms responsible for the Fock reactivity, or the filter-clogging value (Kw) on the one hand and the gamma number on the other, are probably not the same. It was speculated that the analysis method employed in Fock´s test and the filter-clogging value measure the results on a fibre level, whereas the gamma number measures changes mainly on a molecular level. This could explain the difference in the levels of reactivity found in this study.