Ozone Delignification of Pine and Eucalyptus Kraft Pulps. 1. Kinetics

Abstract

The kinetics of ozone delignification of unbleached pine and eucalyptus kraft pulps is studied at ultralow consistency in a stirred reactor. Ozone consumption was monitored with sensors located in both the liquid and gas phases of the reacting medium, and the results confirm the expectations, i.e., the very high oxidation rates. The experiments were carried out following two different approaches that give rise to very different ozone concentration profiles in the pulp suspension and to significant improvements in the statistical contents of the experimental data. In the development of the delignification model, special attention was paid to its validation and thus different sets of data for training and validation were used, leading to high levels of confidence in the model. As far as the delignification is concerned, its rate can be described for both pulps by a pseudohomogeneous model with partial orders of 1 and 2 for ozone and lignin contents, respectively. However, the remaining parameters of the kinetic model are markedly different for the two pulps. The effect of temperature on the delignification rate is small and can be characterized by an activation energy close to 20 kJ/mol for both pulps.