Abstract
Despite of the wide use worldwide, the industrial potential of bamboo species in Brazil is not much investigated. However, some encouragement to revert this situation was created in last few years. The aim of this research was to evaluate the technological characteristics of the Bambusa vulgaris biomass for the production of pulp by the kraft process. The technological characteristics of the raw material were determined by the basic density, the chemical composition and the morphology of the fibers. The cooking process was carried out with the application of eight charges of active alkali, in 90 minutes of heating time and 60 minutes in the maximum temperature of 170ºC. All analyzes were also executed with the Eucalyptus spp. and the Pinus spp., in order to make a complete comparison among the species Bambusa vulgaris and the two most used raw materials for the pulp production in Brazil. The Bambusa vulgaris presented a higher basic density, lower holocellulose content and a higher total extractive content. Its fibers have intermediate length and wall thickness, similar to the Eucalyptus spp. and the Pinus spp. Considering the kraft pulping process, the species Bambusa vulgaris demonstrated to be easier to delignify besides presenting almost zero reject content and smaller consumption of active alkali. However, the Eucalyptus spp. and the Pinus spp. obtained the best yields, the lowest specific consumption of raw material and better selectivities.
Highlights
Brazil is the world's second largest producer of pulp and the eighth in paper production, with a produc-tion of 19.5 million tons of pulp and 10.5 million tons of paper in 2017 (IBÁ 2018)
The literature demonstrated values of the basic density for species cultivated in Brazil
The Eucalyptus spp. wood which was used in the current study presented lower values of basic density, that is usually found in fast-growing planted forest, but low wood basic density is undesirable for pulp production because of its negative impact on pulp throughput (Vidaurre et al 2018) and high specific raw material consumption
Summary
Brazil is the world's second largest producer of pulp and the eighth in paper production, with a produc-tion of 19.5 million tons of pulp and 10.5 million tons of paper in 2017 (IBÁ 2018). Bamboo is a rapidly grown agricultural crop from the family of grasses (Bhardwaj 2019), in the world 1,439 species of bamboos were catalogued, distributed in 116 genera (BPG 2012) and more than four thousand utilities (Pereira and Beraldo, 2016), two of them are the production of pulp and paper, especially on the Asian continent (Yang et al 2008; Batalha et al 2012; Borges et al 2018; Bhardwaj 2019). In order to change this situation and stimulate the study, the cultivation and the use of bamboos in Brazil, the National Policy for the Incentive of Bamboo M anagement and Cultivation was established in 2011 (Do Vale et al 2017; Sette Junior, 2017; Brant et al 2019), instituted by Law number 12,484 /2011 (Brasil 2011)
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