Innovation Anthology #204:
Pulp made from wheat straw is commonly used in countries like China and Turkey where trees are in short supply.
With the growing push for environmentally sustainable products, pulp and paper manufacturers in North America are also interested in wheat straw.
Over the last decade, Wade Chute and his colleagues at the Alberta Research Council have been looking at how wheat straw pulp could meet our market demands for brightness and strength.
WADE CHUTE: In China they will cook wheat straw to a higher yield, so they will remove less of the lignan. As a result they will bleach to a lower brightness. The lower brightness and the higher yield basically saves them money, but its more than enough to achieve the paper objectives that they have there. In North America, we seem to have this fascination with ultra high bright, ultra white, ultra pure printing and writing papers and that necessitates that you cook to a much, much lower yield. It also implies that you use a lot more bleach. So the straw pulp that’s produced in China right now, they just cook it a little bit differently, they bleach it a little bit differently.
According to Wade Chute, ARC’s pilot plant is now processing a wheat straw pulp that could meet the high standards of North American pulp and paper makers.
Thanks today to the Alberta Research Council.
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I’M CHERYL CROUCHER
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Alberta Research Council
Established as the first provincial research organization in Canada, the Alberta Research Council is 85 years old. The Alberta Research Council (ARC) develops and commercializes technologies to give customers a competitive advantage. A leader in innovation, ARC provides solutions globally to the energy, life sciences, agriculture, environment, forestry and manufacturing sectors.
ARC performs about five per cent of the roughly $1.5 billion in R&D done in Alberta each year, and generates revenues of approximately $84 million per year. ARC operates from five sites across the province in Edmonton, Calgary, Vegreville and Devon and employs more than 600 highly-skilled people.
In January 2010, under the new Alberta Innovation Framework, the Alberta Research Council was restructured and incorporated into the new provincial agency Alberta Innovates Technology Futures.
Program Date: 2009-02-19