Effects of temperature gradients in batch kraft cooking of wood species mixtures

A batch kraft cooking non-isothermal digester was modelled based on chemical kinetics and mass transfer equations for softwood. Kraft pulping modelling had been designed for non-isothermal batch cooks of chip mixtures: either mixed-size chips, according to a thickness distribution law, or mixtures of different wood species. The case of existing linear or non-linear radial temperature gradients in a digester was examined. Several chip populations with different thickness distribution were used: normal (major abundance of 3-5 mm chips); uniform (equal abundance of chips in the range 3-12 mm); Gaussian-type (centred on 7 mm chips); Poisson-type (major abundance of 3 mm chips). The effect on cooking results due to temperature gradients in digester was predicted along with the existing non-uniformity arising from the effect of chip size distribution, density, and wood mixtures of different composition and chemical properties (rate constants, activation energies). Results are presented as a kappa number, yield and rejects distributions and mean values. The rather sharp kappa number distributions obtained for isothermal cooks were found to be severely spread in the linear temperature gradient case. The above effects were attenuated when a central core in the digester was kept isothermal. The stratification of chips resulted in significantly reduced width in kappa number distributions. Highest density chips cooked lower; however, since diffusion effects were more prominent in them, their apparent activation energy was also less. So they were slightly less affected by temperature gradients in the digester. Cooking different wood species together also affected the spread of the kappa number distribution. This cumulated more or less to temperature gradients effects, depending on chemical activation energy data and possible differences between species. Copyright © 2008 The Berkeley Electronic Press. All rights reserved.