Around 5%-10% of
paper production worldwide is produced from
agricultural crops, valuing agricultural paper production at between $5 billion and $10 billion. The most notable of these agricultural crops are wheat straw and
bagasse. Using agricultural crops rather than wood has the added advantage of reducing deforestation. Due to the ease with which bagasse can be chemically pulped, bagasse requires less bleaching chemicals than wood pulp to achieve a bright, white sheet of paper. Most chemical bagasse pulp mills concentrate the spent reaction chemicals and combust them to power the paper-mills and to recover the reaction chemicals.
As solution for silicate scaling Many
grasses,
bagasse,
bamboo and some
tropical hardwoods contain much
silicates that may cause
sodium aluminum silicate scales. Moderate amounts of silicates can be controlled with purging lime mud or lime kiln ash. Silicate removal from
green liquor in a soda mill can be achieved by lowering the
pH of the liquor with
CO2-containing flue gases from the lime kiln or other sources. No commercial silicate removal system is available for the
kraft process, but it can handle the small amounts of silicates from northern woods. ==See also==