Determination of fiber charge components of Lo-solids unbleached kraft pulps

Four different titration methods for measurement of fiber charge were used in this study. Each method gave different fiber charge values depending on the acidity of the end point and the interaction between the fiber chemical components and the titrant. Also, the interactions between the ionizable groups on the fiber had significant effects on the interpretation of these results. The conductometric titrations showed trends similar to the results obtained from the potentiometric titration. The conductometric titrations with NaOH produced higher fiber charge values, higher than the titrations with NaHCO(3). The differences between the results obtained from the potentiometric and polyelectrolyte titrations, which were associated with the dissolved fiber components during the delignification, were linearly related to the Kappa number of pulps. The positive intercept of this linear relationship indicated that the kraft pulping process not only removed the ionizable groups associated with the dissolved components, but at the same time provided conditions to form new ionizable groups in the fibers. The polyelectrolyte titration results indicated that the lignin content in the fibers did not affect the fiber surface charge. Data extracted from the FTIR spectra of protonated fibers were highly correlated with the fiber charge values obtained from the conductometric titration with NaOH.