2024 MAY 03 (NewsRx) -- By a
News Reporter-Staff News
Editor at
Agriculture Daily
-- Investigators publish new report on Agriculture - Industrial Crops and Products. According to news reporting from
Raleigh, North Carolina
, by NewsRx journalists, research stated, “Hemp has become increasingly important as an alternative fiber source for papermaking. However, a substantial knowledge gap for future applications of hemp fibers remains, specifically in pulping as a processing technology.”
Funders for this research include
Mohawk Fine Papers, Inc.
,
Genoverde Biosciences, Inc.
The news correspondents obtained a quote from the research from
North Carolina State University
(NC State), “Thus, significant research into optimal pulping methods must be performed to identify processing conditions that produce viable hemp pulps for papermaking applications. The literature has clearly identified the short fiber length of hemp hurd as a major obstacle to effective papermaking as understood from a strength perspective and has been a limitation to any significant work in this arena. To address this issue, genetic improvement efforts were previously undertaken to lengthen the hurd fibers, yet, additional research is needed to understand how to process these new hemp cultivars. Due to their simplicity, soda pretreatment and pulping were chosen as initial processes to investigate. Mild soda pretreatments were investigated as a method to reduce the chip particle size which decreases both liquor penetration distance and pulping time for a subsequent delignification stage. Chip size reduction was observed under multiple experimental conditions however, 12% sodium hydroxide (NaOH) performed the best. Fiber Quality Analyzer (FQA) analyses of soda pulped hemp stalks from improved cultivars resulted in hurd fiber lengths of approximately 1.0-1.2 mm. These fibers are significantly longer than those observed in traditional hurd pulp and comparable to fiber lengths of hardwood pulps. The chemical composition analyses of the raw, pretreated, and pulped hemp reinforced the importance of size reduction pretreatments and treatment severity. At the same processing conditions, larger chips experienced less delignification and xylan removal than smaller chips. Traditional pulping was significantly more effective at delignification than the mild pretreatment and resulted in a hemp sample with three to four times less lignin.”
According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “The pretreatment and pulping results indicate a promising future direction for hemp in the field of papermaking using genetically improved cultivars.”
This research has been peer-reviewed.
For more information on this research see: Alkaline Pretreatment and Soda Pulping of Genetically Improved Hemp. Industrial Crops and Products, 2024;211. Industrial Crops and Products can be contacted at:
Elsevier
, Radarweg 29, 1043 Nx
Amsterdam, Netherlands
. (
Elsevier
- www.elsevier.com; Industrial Crops and Products - http://www.journals.elsevier.com/industrial-crops-and-products/)
Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting
Lucian Lucia
,
North Carolina State University
(NC State),
Dept. of Forest Biomaterials
,
Raleigh, NC
27695,
United States
. Additional authors for this research include
J. Gavin Gaynor
,
Stephen C. Agwuncha
,
Alyssa Smith
,
Michael J. Harrington
and
Gavin Gaynor
.
The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indcrop.2024.118181. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.
(Our reports deliver fact-based news of research and discoveries from around the world.)
