Ethyleneglycol pulp from tagasaste

In this work, we examined the influence of operational variables [viz. Ethyleneglycol concentration (50–70%), temperature (155–185 °C), time (30–90 min) and number of PFI beating revolutions (500–1500)] in the ethyleneglycol pulping of tagasaste (Chamaecytisus proliferus) on pulp yield and the breaking length, stretch, burst index, tear index and brightness of paper sheets formed from it. Application of a fuzzy neural network model in combination with an experimental factorial design allowed the results for the dependent variables to be predicted as a function of the operating conditions used with errors less than 15% in all cases. The operating conditions of choice provided pulp with a high yield (56.85%) and a low brightness (22.51%) which may thus be useful to obtain non-white paper.