Fluff pulp (also called comminution pulp or fluffy pulp) is a type of chemical pulp made from long fibre softwoods. Important parameters for fluff pulp are bulk and water absorbency.
Chemical pulp combines woodchips and chemicals into what is called a digester. The chemical process in the digester breaks down the lignin in the fiber. Lignin is the glue that holds fibers together.
Bleaching of wood pulp is the chemical processing carried out on various types of wood pulp to decrease the color of the pulp, so that it becomes whiter. The main use of wood pulp is to make paper where whiteness (similar to but not exactly the same as “brightness”) is an important characteristic.
Bleached Eucalytus Kraft (BEK) pulp is made from 100% bleached FSC® certified hardwood fibers from well managed forestry plantations. The product has an FSC® chain of custody certification guaranteeing the proper management of the forest. Beached eucalyptus kraft pulp is Total Chlorine Free (TCF) and as such is environmentally friendly.
Wood chips can be pretreated with sodium carbonate, sodium hydroxide, sodium sulfite and other chemicals prior to refining with equipment similar to a mechanical mill. The conditions of the chemical treatment are much less vigorous (lower temperature, shorter time, less extreme pH) than in a chemical pulping process since the goal is to make the fibres easier to refine, not to remove lignin as in a fully chemical process. Pulps made using these hybrid processes are known as chemithermomechanical pulps (CTMP).
Wood pulp made from hardwood and softwood trees has different attributes. In Europe, hardwoods account for 29% and softwoods 71% of wood consumption. Hardwood and softwood fibres can be blended into a single paper, to achieve a desired combination of strength, whiteness, writing surface or other required characteristicsThe mixed characteristics of recovered fibres makes them particularly suited to applications such as newsprint and increasingly, packaging. Many different types of paper are included in recovered paper.
Dissolving pulp, also called dissolving cellulose, is bleached wood pulp or cotton linters that has a high cellulose content (> 90%). It has special properties including a high level of brightness and uniform molecular-weight distribution.