Recipient Organization
Resodyn Corporation
130 N Main ST STE 600
Butte,MT 59701-9314
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
Currently, about half the annual biomass accumulated during cereal grain production is either burned or tilled under. This represents a loss of valuable fiber, which could be used to augment the dwindling supply of wood fiber to manufacture paper. Utilization of this resource would diminish pollution problems associated with disposal and provide value added income to producers. The problems encountered in attempting to utilize the resource revolve around transporting the raw material to a mill; it is simply too light to transport very far. Thus, if the fiber cannot go to the mill, the mill must go to the fiber. The purpose of the research is to develop a novel low frequency (< 100 Hz) sonochemical reactor for accelerating the conversion of agricultural residues into a bleached pulp suitable for making fine writing paper. This reactor technology uses agitation produced by a mechanical transducer that radiates high levels of acoustic energy, enhancing mass transport and
fiber disaggregation in the chemical pulping of agricultural residues. The intense acoustic energy pulses are the driving force for micromixing and pumping of reagent into the straw fiber. Current agri-pulping reactor technology is unsuitable for producing fibers for fine papermaking because consistently high yields of easily bleached pulp cannot be obtained.
Animal Health Component
30%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
30%
Developmental
70%
Goals / Objectives
The objectives are to construct and demonstrate an acoustically agitated pulping and bleaching reactor that can economically produce a marketable bleached pulp from fiber-containing agricultural residues such as cereal grain straw. This reactor will be considerably smaller than conventional pulping technology because the bulk density of cereal grains only allows a 50 mile transport radius to keep the process economical. The economic size of a modern kraft mill is 1500 metric tons per day, whereas an agri-pulp mill may handle from 10 to 100 metric tons per day. Many such mills would be located in grain producing regions of the great plains, feeding centrally located paper mills that would combine post consumer fiber with the grain straw derived fiber to produce competitively priced fine writing paper. The lignin extract by-product of the process will be used as a soil amendment fertilizer to enhance the structure, organic matter content and cation exchange capacity of
agricultural soils.
Project Methods
The approach is to utilize novel acoustic reactor technology which can accelerate reaction rates without damaging fibers. This will be combined with proven neutral sulfite pulping and oxygen-based bleaching to provide a compact and energy efficient reactor that can be deployed to rural farming communities and be operated by local personnel. The first phase of development will optimize the process chemistry and identify the reactor requirements for scaled up capacity. In the second phase, a 0.5 m3 reactor will be built and demonstrated on wheat and rice straw. Given the success of this Phase II research, a commerical partner has been secured for development of the technology at a large commercial scale. Montec Research technology has been selected for demonstration pulping in a large project conducted by the California Rice Growers Cooperative and Arbokem of Vancouver, BC, Canada, the only company currently producing fine writing paper form agricultural residue. This
project will require reactors capable of handling 100 metric tons per day of straw.