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Fiber and Pulp Properties for

Papermaking

Pekka Komulainen
Pekka.Komulainen@clarinet.fi
20 August, 2015
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Hardwood vs. softwood cells

 Hardwood fibers are about third of the softwood fiber length (1 vs. 3 mm) and 2/3 of
softwood fiber thickness (20/30 μm). In addition, hardwood includes lot of vessel and
ray cells, which can cause so called vessel picking and linting in offset printing.

Picture: Prof. Wimmer

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Wood and fiber properties

 The big difference between softwoods and hardwoods is amount of real fibers (tracheids).
Only tracheids can form fiber network and help papermaking.
 Biggest problem with nonwood fibers is low share of real fibers (commonly less than 50%).

Picea Pinus Pinus Populus Betula Eucalyptus

Wood properties Unit
abies sylvestris radiata tremula pendula globulus
Amount of wood volume
Fibers (tracheids) % 95 93 89 61 65 49
Vessels % 0 0 0 26 25 21
Ray cells etc. % 5 7 11 13 10 30
Average fiber dimensions
Length mm 3,3 3,1 3,3 1.0 1.1 1.0
Diameter µm 31 30 40 20 21 16
Cell wall thickness µm 3,1 3,0 7,0 3,2 3,8 3,8
2 x cell wall/width % 20 20 35 32 36 48
Wood Density (dried) kg/m3 405 550 515 450 640 820

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Example of softwood fiber basket

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Roles of different papermaking pulps

 Softwood chemical pulps

 Wet and dry runnability for papermaking, finishing and converting
 Ensuring strength and stiffness for packaging materials
 Hardwood chemical pulps
 Good end use properties of woodfree printing papers and tissues
 Good formation, brightness, opacity and printability
 Decrease the costs of the fiber furnish
 Mechanical pulps
 Good runnability and end use properties of mechanical grades
 Formation, printability
 Better yield and lower costs of the fiber furnish
 Bulk and stiffness, especially for filler ply of multilayer products
 Recycled and nonwood pulps
 Decrease fiber furnish costs, can be more environmentally friendly
 Enlarge the raw material base for papermaking

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Roles of different raw materials

 Fillers and coating pigments

 Improve the end use printability properties of paper
 Decrease costs, carbonate widely available
 Save forests

 Additives
 Improve the papermaking process (performance chemicals)
 Improve the end use properties of the paper (functional chemicals)

 The desired paper properties can be obtained by

 Selecting the proper furnish components
 Adjusting the fiber furnish composition
 Adjusting the properties of the different fiber furnish components used
 Properly controlling the total papermaking and finishing processes

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Wood, fiber and paper properties

RAW MATERIAL FIBER PROPERTIES PAPER

PROPERTIES IN PULPS PROPERTIES

Hemicellulose
Bonding, Density,
content Dimension stability

Cell wall thickness Fiber Bulk, Stiffness,

of fibers Stiffness Wet strength

Fiber Light scattering

coarseness coefficient (opacity)
Nr of Fibers
per unit weight
Formation, Porosity,
Fiber Orientation
length
Dry strength
Wet Strength

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Pulps and paper grades

 Actual fiber furnishes may vary largely and can be quite different especially
in small unintegrated paper mills
 Very often the price of fiber seems to be more important than the
performance of fiber in the product; within each end-product the quality
and the price of end-products may vary largely
 It is important to understand how each furnish component contributes the
quality of the product and the performance in the paper machine, finishing,
and converting

Long fibers for

Paper Grades Short fibers for printability
runnability
Mechanical grades GW, PGW, TMP, BCTMP, DIP
Long fiber softwood
Woodfree grades BHKP, DIP (BSKP)

Several non-woods (bagasse,

Non-wood grades Bamboo, kenaf etc.
wheat straw etc.)

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Tensile strength of different pulps

 DIP has normally better tensile strength

than TMP even if it contains filler.
 Standard newsprint contains 50-100 % DIP.
 TMP fibers of Pinus radiata are coarse and
tend to form bulky, low tensile and porous
sheet.
 Tensile index of all pulps improve when pulp
is made to lower freeness.

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Effects of refining on fibers

 Internal and external fibrillations as well as creation of fines are the main
positive effects of refining.

Delamination and
swelling of fibers
(internal fibrillation)

More fiber hairiness

(external fibrillation)
Straightening of fibers
Fiber cutting and shortening

Removal of primary
Creation of fines
fiber wall and S1 layer
Dissolving of material

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Final bonding in paper

 Picture on the right describes

bonded fibers after refining and
drying.
Picture:
 External fibrils and fines from refining Hubbe
are an important part of bonding.
 Secondary fines (fibrillar) has the
most positive effects.
 Collapsed lumen in the ribbon-like
fibers increase bonded area.
 Crimped section at fiber crossings
have effect on the rheological
behavior of paper.

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Paper density and strength

 How to get bonding without density increase? Dry strength chemicals, surface
sizing and micro-fibrilled cellulose are some possibilities.
 Gentle refining or low Specific Edge Load (SEL) gives good bulk and bonding
at the same time. Low SEL for never dried hardwood is < 0.5 J/m.

Fiber Lumen More external fibrillation,

not collapsed – good bulk and
bonding

More internal fibrillation,

collapsed – good bonding but
low bulk

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Effect of chemical pulp refining on paper

Positive effects Negative effects

 Wet web strength 
 Fiber bonding and strength 
 Better formation
 Coating coverage 
 Porosity and ink demand 
 Smoothness and gloss 
 Water removal and solids content 
 Bulk and stiffness 
 Paper compressibility 
 Opacity and brightness 
 Drying shrinkage  dimension stability 
 Tear strength 
 Energy consumption 
 CAPEX and maintenance costs 

Internal fibrillation External fibrillation Fiber bonding

+ = Pics: E.Gruber

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Wood, fiber and pulp properties for papermaking

 It is important to understand the effect of wood properties on paper quality.

 Wood density is a simple measure and well suited to predict paper strength.
 Fiber length is not the only characteristics correlating with paper strength.
 Latest studies show that even more important are external fibrillation and crill content
after stock preparation. Fibers should be easily refined to save energy.

Main Wood Properties

Average dry density
Tracheid, ray cell and
vessel shares

Wood for Pulping Fibers after Pulping Fibers to Paper Machine

Cellulose, Cell wall thickness Ratio fines to fibers (crill)
hemicellulose Tracheid length External fibrillation
and lignin content Coarseness Cell wall collapse, density
Extractives content Fibril angle Pitch and stickies

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Wood, fiber and paper properties

Fiber processing: Forces during papermaking:

Pulping External Surface

Wood Pulp process pressure tension
properties: drying
Pulp
yield Paper
Wood Pulp
extractives refining Lateral properties:
Lateral force Sheet
Wall/dia conform- density
ratio ability
Wood Degree of
density collapse Strength
properties
Fiber Wall
Bonded
diameter thickness Optical
area
Wood properties
Surface
vessels Wood
properties
chemistry
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Fiber collapse and paper properties

 Differences in relative cell wall thickness have Pinus radiata

effect on paper properties.
 An example here is Pinus radiata compared to
Norway spruce. TMP fibers of Pinus radiata are
coarse and tend to form bulky, low tensile and
porous sheet with reduced coating and ink Norway spruce
holdout.
 Spruce fibers have lot of thin-walled early wood
fibers, which form more dense, smooth and strong
paper.
 Dense paper, however, can have lower light
scattering and stiffness.
 From hardwoods eucalyptus is more thick-walled
while birch and acacia are more thin-walled.

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Fiber collapse and flexibility

 It is important to increase flexibility and collapsibility of thick-walled fibers.

 The main means to improve collapsibility is refining.
 When using stratified headbox it is possible to fractionate fibers and put coarse
fraction to the middle layer.

Good fiber Suitable fiber for tissue, copy paper and

for printing paper cartonboard middle ply

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Hardwood chemical pulp

 For woodfree paper grades mainly hardwood kraft is used. Thick-walled

eucalyptus can be better than thin-walled or birch.
 On the left side paper is bulky and thicker giving better stiffness, which is
important e.g. for copy paper.
 Thick-walled fibers are better in cartonboard middle ply because
smoothness is not as important there as bulk and stiffness.

Picture: Celso Foelkel

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Primary and secondary fines of hardwood

 Primary fines of hardwood pulp (ray and vessel cells) cause picking, linting and
reduce bonding.
 Secondary fines formed in refining is mostly thin fibrils and enhance bonding.

Primary fines Secondary fines

Picture: Martin A. Hubbe

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 Effect of softwood kraft on paper properties
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Positive
 Strength properties Increase (also surface, tear and wet strength)
 Folding endurance Increases

Negative
 Formation Less uniform
 Smoothness Decreases
 Porosity Increases
 Ink holdout Lower
 Bulk and stiffness Decrease
 Dimensional stability Decreases
 Energy consumption Increases
 Costs Increase
Picture: Canfor

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Fiber type and wet end runnability

 Printing papers with mechanical pulp

have better runnability on paper machine
than woodfree grades.
 The main reason is that mechanical pulp
fibers are stiffer in wet condition.
 The good tensile stiffness of the wet fiber
network is mainly due to elastic pressure
and friction forces between fibers.
 It is easy to make a model from four
sticks and note the rigid structure without
bonding.
 Good runnability is always more No bonding but very rigid structure!
important than we could imagine.

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Dryer section runnability

 There should be high residual tension after

first wet strain to avoid web slackness and
breaks.
 Low tension after first dryers due to
relaxation may lead to slackening of the
wet web.
 This causes wrinkling, bagging, fluttering
and weaving of the web which can lead to
web breaks.
 In modern single felted dryer sections, the
problematic areas of paper with low
tension level are mainly found in
converging and diverging gaps between
the dryer cylinders and the fabric.

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Fiber fines and residual tension

 The studies of Dr. Retulainen suggest that the residual tension is more closely related to the
tensile stiffness than to the tensile strength. Therefore also the factors, such as the fiber
stiffness, straightness and the activity of the network to bear load, affect the residual tension.
 It is interesting to note that stiff TMP fibers blended with only 10 % kraft fines form stronger
wet sheet than kraft fibers and kraft fines.

On the left the effect of fiber and

fines type on the residual
tension (tension at 1% strain
after 0.475 s relaxation) of wet
sheet (compared at 55%
dryness).

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 Advantages of low break frequency
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Lower raw Less steam &
Less effluent and material costs energy/ton
fresh water/ton Lower
Increased
Longer machine furnish
Improved wire life speed cost
Productivity runnability
Cost
Efficiency Decreased use of Steam & el
Cleaner chemicals used only Higher Less starch
system once press solids etc. needed

Low Break More Net Less Dry Lower Chemical

Frequency Tons Broke Consumption

Stable and better Better and less variable Easy wet end
Product paper quality raw materials chemistry
Quality

Better CD- Less shade & Stronger Better bulk Better Constant
profiles caliper variation paper & stiffness printability filler content

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TMP fibers and bonding

 TMP fibres are normally not very well fibrillated. Fibrillation is needed to get bonding.
Sometimes there is still latency left to the paper machine. Latency (curling of fibers)
reduces strength and bonding and increases porosity.
 Fibrillation can be increased by using fresh/moist wood, alkaline pH, high amount of
reject refining and also with post-refining (however may cut fibers too much).
 Freeness as such is a measure of fines content, but not a good measure of fibrillation.
Fibrillation should be checked from microscope fiber pictures.

Long TMP fibers with thick cell

wall are normally not very well
collapsed or fibrillated. Internal
bond of paper tends to be low.

Picture: Knowpap

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TMP fibrils and flakes

 A good quality TMP for printing paper includes fibrils to give bonding and strength as
well as flakes (mainly unbonded material) to improve light scattering and paper opacity.
 For cartonboard middle ply flakes are not needed.

Picture: KARI LUUKKO AND HANNU PAULAPURO

TAPPI JOURNAL FEBRUARY 1999

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Effect of TMP fines to paper properties

 It is important to note that fibrils increase tensile strength without reducing light scattering
and flakes increase light scattering without decreasing tensile strength.
 A good TMP includes both flakes and fibrils and thus increases both light scattering and
tensile strength.

Picture: KARI LUUKKO AND HANNU

PAULAPURO
TAPPI JOURNAL FEBRUARY 1999

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 Fiber wall thickness vs. roughness & opacity
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 Fiber wall thickness determines very much paper smoothness and opacity.
 Increased fiber splitting without fiber cutting (lower freeness) can improve
the situation but not totally.

Picture: PFI

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Optimal mechanical pulp

 Optimal mechanical pulp for improved

publication papers should have:
 Thin fiber walls (raw material selection)
 Fiber fines and large degree of fiber splitting (thin
slot screening and reject refining)
 Fibrillated fiber surfaces (reject refining)
 Low amount of shives, and especially latewood
shives (reject refining and thin slot screening)
 Reasonable fiber length (thin slot screening and
reject refining)
 Such fiber properties will give publication papers
with improved print quality, formation and
runnability.

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 Fiber Wall Thickness of Norway Spruce
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 Average fiber wall thickness of Norway spruce TMP is almost 2 µm but there
are some fibers with wall thickness of 3-5 µm.
 Mechanical pulps made from mature Pinus radiata can have fiber wall thickness
of about 6 µm, which is three times the Norway spruce value.

Reme, P. A., Kure, K.-A.,

Gregersen, O. W., Helle, T.,
1999 International
Mechanical Pulping Conference

Picea Abies

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Importance of fiber wall thickness

 It is important to have several fiber layers in a thin paper to get good formation,
smoothness, opacity and gloss. This correlates with thin fiber wall.
 Fiber wall of Norway spruce is about 2 µm while Radiata pine has 4-6 µm. In a 40 gsm
paper there can be only 3-4 fibers of Pinus radiata in the total paper thickness.

T
~ P/2 Fiber Fiber
Wall Grammage
2
µm g/m
1 3
2 6
Wall density ~ 1500 kg/m3 3 9
4 12
5 15
Area = Perimeter x Wall Thickness, A=P*T 6 18
Fiber volume = Area x Length, V=A*L=P*T*L
Coarseness = Fiber weight/Length, C=W/L
C = Volume*Density/Length, C=V*ρ/L=P*T*L* ρ/L= P*T*ρ
Fiber Grammage (g/m2) = Coarseness/fiber Width = P*T*ρ/P*2 = 2*T*ρ = 3*T (µm)

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Example: pulp characteristics for containerboards

 There is no common criteria for pulp

quality. It depends on end products
to be manufactured.
 Linerboard
 Compression strength, burst,
stiffness and porosity are most
important
 For white-top grades printing
properties are important
 Corrugating medium (fluting)
 Compression strength is critical

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What makes strong kraftliner

 It is quite common understanding that fiber length and fiber collapse are the most
important fiber properties having effect on important linerboard properties. This
means that kraft pulp must be strongly refined to get lumen collapse and higher
bonded area. But there is also a third variable what Innventia in Sweden has studied.
 PulpEye has recently introduced its CrillEye online crill measurement. Crill is finely
divided cellulosic material - finer than external fibrillation - that is liberated during
refining process. The crill particles are about a hundred times thinner than the fibers.
 In spite of the fact that only about one per cent of the weight of fibers and other
particles in the furnish is crill, it can correspond to as much as fifty per cent of the
total free surface area. This shows the importance of crill for the strength properties
of paper.
 Valmet has also introduced its own online strength measurement, which is based on
external fibrillation or hairiness of fibers.

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Crill and tensile strength

 Research studies at Innventia have shown that crill is the single variable
having the strongest connection to paper strength. Laboratory results in
the figure below show a strong correlation to paper tensile strength index.

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 Fibers are never identical
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