Dissolving pulp and furfural production from jute stick

In this paper, dissolving pulp is produced from jute stick and jute fiber mixture in pre-hydrolysis soda-anthraquinone process. The overall pulp yield was 30.7 with kappa number 14.8 at the conditions of 18% alkali charge for 2 h cooking at 170 degrees C. The purity of the produced pulp was 94.1% with residual pentosan content of 4.64 Vs, which improved to 95.3% with residual pentosan content of 3.7% by cold alkali extraction process. The prehydrolysis liquor from the jute stick - jute fiber mixture contained 5.07% xylose, which was converted to furfural by varying H2SO4 concentration, time and temperature. The maximum furfural yield (60.5 %) was obtained at the conditions of 0.1 N H2SO4 for 60 min at 170 degrees C. Further increase of reaction parameter decreased furfural yield.