Woodfibre for future products from pulp

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Wood-fibre for future products from pulp

• Paul Kibblewhite

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Wood-fibre for papermakingThe next 10 20
years
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Fibre property interrelationships
Wall area ? Coarseness Number ? 1/(wall area x
length) Width/thickness Fibre collapse (in
dried sheet) Perimeter/wall thickness ? 1/(Wood
density) ? Collapse
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Softwood versus Hardwood fibres
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Furnish mix components

• Softwood fibres for reinforcement, runnability
  and robustness
• Hardwood fibres for bulk, surface optical
  properties, and formation

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Eucalypt fibre selection for papermaking

• Plantation-grown species, hybrids and clones
• Short crop rotations at 5 years
• Chip density about 550 kg/m³
• High kraft pulp yield
• Target fibre coarseness, length and collapse
  resistance
• Target sheet bulk and tensile strength

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Globulus a premium eucalypt fibre-type
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Where to in short-term?

• Conventional breeding and propagation
  technologies
• Short crop rotations
• High forest productivity and disease resistance
• Emphasis on low cost, rapid propagation
  procedures, and screening tools
• Genetic modification of lower priority

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Softwood fibre-types
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Softwood pulp uniformity by fibre-type
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Northern is the premium softwood fibre-type

• Low coarseness
• long and slender
• High number
• Low MFA
• High hemicelluloses
• Low refining energy
• Long crop rotations

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Northern fibre-type from radiata pineHow Do?

• Wood/chip segregation
• Pulp fractionation
• Conventional breeding, hybridisation and cloning
• Genetic modification

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Market kraft categories through wood/chip
segregation
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Rods and RibbonsPulp fractionation by fibre
collapse
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Breeding for fibre quality

• Select for
• Low Fibre Coarseness
• while
• retaining or increasing
• Density and Length

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Coarseness?Wood-fibre number
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Radiata pine fibre improvements in the short-term

• Wood/chip segregation
• Further advances limited
• Pulp fractionation by fibre collapse
• Yet to be achieved
• Genetic modification, and breeding for low
  coarseness
• Pulp mill is a residue user
• Change required for pulpwood regimes and fibre
  quality improvement

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Pulp-fibre for papermaking 50 years on!Who Knows?

• Todays commodities
• Tissue, sanitary and packaging products, possibly
  OK
• Junk-mail, newsprint, communication and
  hard-copy, probably limited?
• Todays specialty cement reinforcement pulp?

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Wood-fibre for future bio-products from pulpA
50-year horizon
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Softwood and Eucalypt-type pulp-fibre 50 years on

• Short rotation pulpwood regimes (5 10 years)
• Highly uniform fibre property populations
• Earlywood- and latewood-type pulps
• Wide range of chemical and physical
  fibre-property combinations

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Many possible fibre property combinations1.
Separate EW LW fibre populations
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2. Low or high coarseness rod-like fibre
populations
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3. Four plus fibre-property combinations for
future products from pulp
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Fibre property combinations

• Designer fibres
• through
• Purpose-grown, short-rotation crops
• for
• Sustainable designer products

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Fibre-property-combination research

• Genetic modification
• A critical success requirement
• Assay procedures to screen genotypes at the
  plantlet stage (3 months?)

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Back to Reality!

• Who pays?
• Fibre-property-combination research and
  development
• Product identification processes
• Fibre property combination selection and supply
• Product development
• Constraints
• Costs
• Sustainability, and product- and market-driven
• Green-house effect