The effect of acid-base treatment parameters on the component composition of short flax fiber

The article presents the results of research on the effect of two-stage acid-base treatment on the component composition, structure and whiteness index of short flax fiber provided by the Republican Unitary Industrial and Trading Enterprise “Orsha Flax Processing Plant”. Pretreatment with 1.0 % nitric acid for 1 h followed by alkaline cooking with sodium hydroxide solutions with a concentration of 1.0‒5.0 % for 1‒5 h made it possible to establish that an increase in alkali concentration and cooking time contributes to a decrease in lignin content from 5.9 to 0.25 % and ash content from 1.2 to 0.3 %, while the content of alpha-cellulose increases from 84.0 to 95.4 %. Data analysis shows that the two-stage processing of short flax fiber significantly increases the whiteness of cellulose, providing a maximum increase in the whiteness index when using 5.0 % alkali solution for 5 h of treatment. This is due to the intensive removal of coloring components, mainly lignin, pigments and extractives. The data obtained indicate that nitric acid treatment provides the key technological advantages of the two-stage process: short process time, cooking at atmospheric pressure and low temperature. These findings make it possible to increase the efficiency of the process for obtaining high-quality cellulose from short flax fiber.

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