High-Yield Pulp from Brassica napus to Manufacture Packaging Paper

The stalks that are left on the field after harvesting rapeseed crops could be used to make packaging grade paper. This work evaluates the suitability of mechanical and thermomechanical pulps from rapeseed stalks for papermaking, with a view to alleviating the limitations of recycled fluting. Their performance was compared to that of commercial fluting (recycled fluting) of the same basis weight, 100 g/m(2), and to that of virgin pulps from pine wood. The thermomechanical pulp was refined to improve key mechanical properties. Its drainability was found to be very low, even before refining, and its breaking length after beating to 1200 PFI revolutions, 4 km, surpassed that of sheets of recycled fluting that were obtained under similar conditions. These findings support the hypothesis that high-yield pulps from rapeseed stalks are a strong choice of virgin fibres to produce fluting and, generally speaking, packaging paper.