Investigation of the Effect of Endoglucanase Treatment on Beatability and Drainage Rate of OCC Pulps

Abstract

This research was performed to investigate of different endoglucanase levels and enzymatic treatment times on the beatability and drainage rate of OCC pulp. Endoglucanase enzyme with different dosages including 1u, 2u and 3u (on oven dry based pulp) at different times of 0.5, 1, 1.5 and 2 hours under constant process conditions added to OCC pulp in two states namely refined and unrefined. Treated pulps under different conditions were evaluated at the point of beatability and drainage rates. The results showed that addition of enzyme caused to improve (confidence level of 95%) freeness and drainage rate, compared to control sample but improvement of freeness with increasing of endoglucanase dosages was not observed significantly. The results of the effect of different enzyme levels at different refining levels was shown that addition of different enzyme dosages to pulps refined at different levels, caused to improve freeness and drainage rate. With increasing the degree of pulps refining (higher levels of refining), the effect of enzyme concentration was observed a little to improve freeness and drainage rate. Also in total refining levels, longer treatment by enzyme from up to 1 hours (using optimum dosage 1u) was led a significant effect on increasing the freeness while there was not a significant decrease of freeness at longer times than 1 hour.

Keywords

• OCC pulp
• endoglucanase enzyme
• beatability
• drainage rate