WOOD HANDLING

Wood form can be:

raw logs
chips from a lumber mill

Wood preparation area basic functions:

to receive and meter the wood supply to the
pulping process at the rate demanded by the mill
o prepare the wood so that it meets the mills
feed specifications for species, cleanliness and
dimensions
to collect any material rejected by the previous
operations and send it to final disposal

 Debarking
can be done hydraulically with high-pressure
water jets, or mechanically by rubbing logs
against each other or with metal cutting tools
Applicable for logs
Logs are debarked because bark contains little
fibre, has a high extractives content, is dark, and
often carries large quantities of grit
Hydraulic debarkers may be used in coastal
areas; however, the effluent generated is difficult
to treat and contributes to water pollution.

 Sawing
Debarked logs may be sawn into short lengths (1 to 6 metres) for
stone groundwood pulping or chipped for refiner mechanical or
chemical pulping methods

Chipping
Chippers tend to produce chips with a considerable size range, but
pulping requires chips of very specific dimensions to ensure
constant flow through refiners and uniform cooking in digesters.
Chips are therefore passed over a series of screens whose function
is to separate chips on the basis of length or thickness. Oversized
chips are rechipped, while undersized chips are either used as
waste fuel or are metered back into the chip flow.

screening.

Chip storage area with front end loaders

PULPING
is the process by which the bonds within the wood
structure are ruptured either mechanically or
chemically.
Chemical pulps can be produced by either alkaline (i.e.,
sulphate or kraft) or acidic (i.e., sulphite) processes.
The highest proportion of pulp is produced by the
sulphate method, followed by mechanical (including
semi-chemical, thermomechanical and mechanical) and
sulphite methods.
Pulping processes differ in the yield and quality of the
product, and for chemical methods, in the chemicals
used and the proportion that can be recovered for
reuse.

 Mechanical Pulping
Mechanical pulps are produced by grinding wood against a
stone or between metal plates, thereby separating the wood
into individual fibres
The shearing action breaks cellulose fibres, so that the
resulting pulp is weaker than chemically separated pulps.
The lignin connecting cellulose to hemicellulose is not
dissolved; it merely softens, allowing the fibres to be ground
out of the wood matrix.
The yield (proportion of original wood in pulp) is usually
greater than 85%. S
ome mechanical pulping methods also use chemicals (i.e.,
the chemi-mechanical pulps); their yields are lower since
they remove more of the non-cellulosic materials.