Application of analytical pyrolysis to the characterization of Eucalyptus extractives and pitch deposits from a pulp mill

Abstract

It has been demonstrated that both conventional flash pyrolysis and thermally assisted hydrolysis and alkylation (THA) in the presence of tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH), enable the detection of some important components of wood extractives (WE) from Eucalyptus globulus. These are released by thermoevaporation from the acetone extracts and easily identified by GC-MS. On the other hand, Py-GC-MS with and without TMAH has proven to be a very useful technique for a rapid characterization of pitch deposits both from the machine area and from TCF end-pulp from E. globulus. In spite of the low ratio analyte/matrix in the second case, the pyrograms from the pitch-enriched pulp samples showed a satisfactory reproducibility, and some significative pyrolysis compounds arising exclusively from the pitch deposit were also evident, although their specific origin could not be unambiguously determined.