Adsorption of functionalized polymer to cellulose in the bleaching step - a way to tune the fiber properties

Purpose and goal

The purpose of the project was to: 1) Educate a doctoral student with relevant knowledge for the pulp industry 2) Create wood fibers with new functionalities by absorbing polymers to the fibers´ surface. The project´s more specific scientific goal was to understand how negatively charged polymers can adsorb to negatively charged fiber surfaces and how the adsorption is affected by ion types and ion concentrations. The graduation of a doctoral student is scheduled for the spring of 2022.

Expected results and effects

Within this project, a doctoral student with scientific and industrial knowledge will graduate in 2022, and the pulp industry has gained an increased understanding of fiber functionalization by polymers´ adsorption to cellulose surfaces. The research community worked a lot with this 20 years ago. Then they got stuck and could not implement this knowledge industrially. The knowledge generated within this project has increased the chances of successfully producing functionalized wood fibers through adsorption, even if more challenges are left, like secure recyclability etc.

Planned approach and implementation

This project has been a close collaboration between Chalmers and Södra Cell, Värö, with supervision of Treesearch doctoral student site visits laboratory work by the student at Södra´s facility joint workshops and publications presentation of results at Tresearch´s events organization of an international conference 2019. This project has also made it possible to start a joint post-doc to complement this project and increase the conditions for achieving techno-economically feasible functionalization of fiber surfaces in the pulp industry.