The Chemical Technology of Wood

Book excerpt: The Chemical Technology of Wood is an eight-chapter introductory text on the developments in understanding the chemistry of wood and its chemical-technological utilization. The opening chapters of this book cover the productive aspects of forests, followed by a description of the anatomy and physical properties of wood. The subsequent chapter presents a summative wood analysis concerning its cellulose, hemicelluloses, lignin, and other extraneous components. This topic is followed by a presentation of several destructive processing of wood, including acid hydrolysis, pyrolysis, oxidation, and hydrogenolysis. The remaining chapters describe the pulp production through sulfite cooking and using alkaline reagents. This book will prove useful to chemists, engineers, biologists, foresters, and economists.