Pulping with Ioniq Liquids - Meet doctoral researcher Fjor Morante
Updated: Sep 8
In 2013, Professor Ilkka Kilpeläinen at the University of Helsinki patented a method to use ionic liquids in pulping. Now, Emission Free Pulping , doctoral researcher Fjor Morante, has taken up the topic and dived deeper.
The goal is to understand the mechanisms behind the phenomenon of fibrillation of wood with ionic liquids. So far, he has found that the ionic liquids act on the middle lamella that keeps the wood cells together. When the bond is removed, the fibres separate. A large number of different ionic liquids have already been discovered to be effective for this application. Compared to the regeneration of textile fibres with ionic liquids, the liquids used in pulping are not dissolving major components of wood, such as cellulose.
The end product of this pulping method is resembles to the fibre type received from thermomechanical pulping. However, the operating temperature is only 80–120 °C, remarkably, it requires no mixing and can be done at ambient pressure providing means towards economic feasibility. In laboratory scale, the yield is high, reaching 95%. These findings are preliminary and need further work to verify.
A third and interesting finding is that the fibre length in ionic liquid pulping is longer than what you get from TMP. The development is still underway, but this is certainly one of the exciting things to look forward to in this research.
The most important aspect of Fjor's work has to do with the recycling of the ionic liquids. As a solvent it is recoverable, and due to its high price, all of it needs to be recycled back into the process. The biggest challenge ahead for Fjor is full recovery of the used ionic liquid.
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