Abstract

In the paper making process, wood chips are cooked to form a pulp, which is subsequently washed, bleached, and pressed into sheets. The mechanical strength, uniformity, and amount of bleach necessary to whiten the paper all depend on the lignin concentration in the wood pulp. In this paper we report on a developmental method to excite and measure the fluorescence from wood pulp. Correlation of the fluorescence intensity with lignin concentration exhibits very good repeatability. The peak wavelength of the fluorescent emission is 429 ± 3 nm which closely agrees with results obtained by other workers' observations of fluorescence from pure lignin.

© 1989 Optical Society of America