High porosity non-wood pulp
AssigneeKimberly-Clark Worldwide, Inc.
InventorsThomas G. Shannon, Zhiying Yu
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
The non-wood pulps have a fiber length greater than about 1.70 mm and a porosity of about 100 cfm or greater. The relatively high degree of porosity is achieved without a loss in tensile strengths. The high degree of porosity and strength makes the pulps well suited for the manufacture of wet-laid fibrous products, particularly wet-laid tissue products. The pulps may be prepared from plants of the family Asparagaceae by mechanical pulping and more preferably by a chemi-mechanical pulping using a sodium hydroxide alkaline peroxide solution where the plant biomass is cut to size prior to pulping.
Claims20
A non-wood pulp consisting essentially of fibers derived from one or more plants of the genus Hesperaloe, the pulp having a moisture content of about 10% or less, a Tensile Index from about 40 to about 80 Nm/g and a porosity, having units of cubic feet per minute, equal to or greater than:
- −3.55×Tensile Index (Nm/g)+269.
A method of manufacturing a non-wood pulp comprising the steps of:
- (a) providing a non-wood biomass;
- (b) cutting the non-wood biomass to a nominal length less than about 20 mm;
- (c) extracting water soluble solids from the cut biomass;
- (d) pressing the extracted biomass to increase the consistency to at least about 40%;
- (e) impregnating the biomass with a first alkaline peroxide solution and maintaining the impregnation for a first reaction time to produce impregnated bagasse;
- (f) refining the impregnated bagasse under first refining conditions to produce a primary pulp;
- (g) cleaning the primary pulp;
- and (h) adding a second alkaline peroxide solution to the cleaned pulp to produce a bleached pulp, wherein the bleached pulp a Tensile Index from about 40 to about 80 Nm/g and a porosity, having units of cubic feet per minute, equal to or greater than:
- −3.55×Tensile Index (Nm/g)+269.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.