Comparing the Environmental Performance of Fluorescent Whitening Agents with Peroxide Bleaching of Mechanical Pulp

The use of fluorescent whitening agents (FWAs) instead of oxidative bleaching agents such as peroxide is an alternative for the bleaching of mechanical pulp. By this approach, the chromophores of the wood components in the pulp are not destroyed chemically but the brightness of the pulp is achieved by increased re‐emission of blue light in the range of 400–500 nm. In this study, a typical FWA and peroxide bleaching chemicals are compared with respect to both production and application in the pulp mill. The life‐cycle inventory shows that, on the one hand, the production of the FWA leads to higher releases of salts and adsorbable organically bound halogens (AOX) to surface waters and that, on the other hand, significantly less FWA is required in the application step in order to reach the same pulp brightness. The life‐cycle impact assessment of the production step is presented in terms of Eco‐indicator 95. These results, however, do not cover the environmental fate of various chemicals released to the aquatic environment in the course of the bleaching/whitening step. Therefore, this part is assessed by means of a more detailed investigation of the chemicals' environmental fate in rivers and their aquatic toxicity.

[1]  Philip H. Howard,et al.  Handbook of Physical Properties of Organic Chemicals , 1997 .

[2]  Tom C. J. Feijtel,et al.  Development of a geography-referenced regional exposure assessment tool for European rivers - great-er contribution to great-er #1 , 1997 .

[3]  K. Verschueren.  Handbook of environmental data on organic chemicals , 1977 .

[4]  Rolf Bretz,et al.  Screening LCA for large numbers of products , 1996 .

[5]  Peter Reichert,et al.  Accidental input of pesticides into the Rhine River. , 1988, Environmental science & technology.

[6]  R. Voss,et al.  The effect of wood species composition on the toxicity of simulated mechanical pulping effluents , 1992 .

[7]  R. Voss,et al.  An improved solvent-extraction based procedure for the gas chromatographic analysis of resin and fatty acids in pulp mill effluents , 1985 .

[8]  J. Volkman,et al.  Determination of resin acids by gas chromatography and high-performance liquid chromatography in paper mill effluent, river waters and sediments from the upper Derwent Estuary, Tasmania , 1993 .

[9]  Konrad Saur,et al.  Life cycle impact assessment , 1997 .

[10]  H. B. Lee,et al.  Determination of resin and fatty acids in sediments near pulp mill locations. , 1991, Journal of chromatography.

[11]  D. Mackay,et al.  Modelling the Fate of Organochlorine Chemicals in Pulp Mill Effluents , 1992 .

[12]  Peter Reichert,et al.  Behavior of the insecticides disulfoton and thiometon in the Rhine River: a chemodynamic study , 1989 .

[13]  Martin Scheringer,et al.  Persistenz und Reichweite von Umweltchemikalien , 1999 .

[14]  R. Schwarzenbach,et al.  Environmental Organic Chemistry , 1993 .

[15]  O. Jolliet,et al.  Fate coefficients for the toxicity assessment of air pollutants , 1997 .

[16]  B. Holmbom,et al.  The wood extractives in alkaline peroxide bleaching of groundwood from Norway spruce , 1989 .

[17]  Martin Scheringer,et al.  Characterization of the Environmental Distribution Behavior of Organic Chemicals by Means of Persistence and Spatial Range , 1997 .

[18]  J. W. Owens.  Life‐Cycle Assessment: Constraints on Moving from Inventory to Impact Assessment , 1997 .

[19]  Walter Giger,et al.  Dynamic Behavior of Fluorescent Whitening Agents in Greifensee: Field Measurements Combined with Mathematical Modeling of Sedimentation and Photolysis , 1998 .