Pulp Production and Processing

Book excerpt: Cellulose represents the most widely spread organic polymer found in nature and it was used for a long time as a raw material for paper, textiles, film and flexible packing material. Due to its accessibility in huge amounts by photosynthesis process as a renewable material, cellulose is considered at present the answer to many problems connected with sustainable development. This explains the great scientific interest for this compound along with a lot of preoccupations to systematize the accumulated information in reviews and books. This book will present the aspects of cellulose obtaining in the correleation with its integration in a new concept of biorefining. Thus usual technological steps of pulp manufacture (pulping, bleaching) will be continued with chemistry charactersitics of by-products and their utilization, fiber characterization for paper obtaining, cellulose derivatives and special products resulted in cellulose processing (beads and microspheres, micro-and nano-structures, fibers production, their antibacterial properties, optical functional film, and hydrogen). This extensive book should prove to be a very useful tool for scientists, students and postgraduates working in the field of pulp, paper and cellulose derivatives aiming at opening a new era for renewable resources processed by biorefining.