CrillEye can be used for monitoring in the hydrolysis of cellulose for the production of CNC

Shubhankar Bhattacharyya, Senior Researcher at RISE Processum, has been the project leader and is also the one who came up with the idea when he discussed the CrillEye analyzer with PulpEye.

"The experiment were divided into two parts," says Shubhankar Bhattacharyya. “In part one, we monitored the hydrolysis reaction for bleached pulp from Domsjö Fabriker and in part two fiber rejects, also from Domsjö Fabriker. The quality of CNC with the acid hydrolysis method depends on several different parameters such as type of cellulose raw materials, acid resistance and amount of acid, reaction time and temperature, size or type of reaction vessel. In order to be able to control the result (the degree of degradation), it is important to monitor the reaction. "”

"CrillEye is used to measure the amount of total, free and bound curl, in the fibers in pulp and paper mills," says Öjvind Sundvall, CEO of PulpEye. “Therefore, it was very interesting to participate in this project because we always strive to expand the use of our technology to new applications. As the result shows in this case, there are more possibilities than just the traditional ones. "

"The results show that it is possible to monitor the acid hydrolysis reaction of pulp to produce CNC," continues Shubhankar Bhattacharyya. "However, all of these measurements were made via offline crill measurements."

”More data is needed to prove this technology for commercial applications. However, it is clear that crill measurement can be useful in new CNC production applications. For example, it will be interesting in CNC production with a targeted size distribution. This opens new doors for CNC process development where it will be possible to produce CNC with the desired quality regardless of cellulose source. ”