Questões de Concurso
Comentadas sobre vocabulário | vocabulary em inglês
Foram encontradas 2.466 questões
INSTRUCTIONS: Read the text carefully and then answer the questions from 33 to 38 by choosing the correct alternative.
Brazil corruption scandals: All you need to know
For the past three years, Brazil has been gripped by a scandal which started with a state-owned oil company and grew to encapsulate people at the very top of business - and even presidents.
On the face of it, it is a straightforward corruption scandal - albeit one involving millions of dollars in kickbacks and more than 80 politicians and members of the business elite.
But as the tentacles of the investigation dubbed Operation Car Wash fanned out, other scandals emerged.
It has led to some of those who have found themselves accused claiming they are the victims of political plots, designed to bar them from office.
What is Operation Car Wash?
Operation Car Wash began in March 2014 as an investigation into allegations that Brazil's biggest construction firms overcharged state-oil company Petrobras for building contracts.
Investigators accused directors at the firm - named the world's most ethical oil and gas company in 2008 - of skimming the extra money off the top as a bribe for awarding the contract.
Which is bad enough - but then the Workers' Party found itself dragged into the corruption scandal amid allegations of having funneled some of these funds to pay off politicians and buy their votes and help with political campaigns.
Among those accused in the scandal were dozens of politicians, and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva - the country's extremely popular former president, known affectionately as "Lula".
The words kickbacks (line 04), fanned out (line 06) and bribe (line 13) mean, respectively:
Text for the questions from 28 to 37.
A Musical Genius
1 Beethoven is one of the most influential figures in
the history of classical music. His exceptional talent was
already evident when he was still a young man, trying to
4 survive a rather unorthodox upbringing. Indeed, his
eccentric father would often make him study music in the
middle of the night.
7 Soon, the young Beethoven's ability won him the
admiration of the leading contemporary musical figures.
However, just at the point when he was beginning to reap
10 the rewards of his early endeavors, he realized that he was
becoming deaf. Beethoven felt devastated as it was clear to
him that his increasing deafness was incurable. And yet, he
13 kept composing and his music displayed a striking change in
style, becoming both heavier in tone and larger in scale.
Internet: <www.flo‐joe.co.uk> (adapted).
“unorthodox” (line 4) means
Read the following text and answer question.
Importance of Aquaculture
Aquaculture involves the art, science and business of breeding aquatic animals and plants in fresh or
marine waters for human use. It also extends to the marketing of such organisms in a controlled environment. It is a kind of agriculture, and therefore, it requires inputs such as clean water and nutrients.
It also requires storage for harvested produce, transportation and marketing facilities.
Inputs often depend on the species that are farmed. Species lower on the aquatic food chain usually require less input, as they feed on microorganisms and are fine in just clean water. More inputs like fish or fishmeal, cereals, or grains are required, as we get higher on the food chain with species like salmon or tuna.
All over the world, the demand for seafood has increased because people have learned that seafood as part of regular diets are healthier and help fight cardiovascular disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s and many other major illnesses.
Aquaculture will add to wild seafood, and make it _______ and accessible to all.
Aquaculture business provides tax and royalty revenue to local governments. Besides, there is also potential revenue from exports.
(Adapted from: https://goo.gl/qcbcfY. Access: 01/25/2018)
Read the following text and answer question.
Importance of Aquaculture
Aquaculture involves the art, science and business of breeding aquatic animals and plants in fresh or
marine waters for human use. It also extends to the marketing of such organisms in a controlled environment. It is a kind of agriculture, and therefore, it requires inputs such as clean water and nutrients.
It also requires storage for harvested produce, transportation and marketing facilities.
Inputs often depend on the species that are farmed. Species lower on the aquatic food chain usually require less input, as they feed on microorganisms and are fine in just clean water. More inputs like fish or fishmeal, cereals, or grains are required, as we get higher on the food chain with species like salmon or tuna.
All over the world, the demand for seafood has increased because people have learned that seafood as part of regular diets are healthier and help fight cardiovascular disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s and many other major illnesses.
Aquaculture will add to wild seafood, and make it _______ and accessible to all.
Aquaculture business provides tax and royalty revenue to local governments. Besides, there is also potential revenue from exports.
(Adapted from: https://goo.gl/qcbcfY. Access: 01/25/2018)
“Perhaps they were detected as flaws in a product’s quality caused inadvertently by one or more workers trying to keep pace with production demands that should not have been placed on them.”
1. the word ‘trying’ is being used in the sentence as a continuous verb. 2. the tense used in: ‘were detected, is the passive voice. 3. the word ‘flaws’ means ‘imperfections’. 4. in ‘product’s quality’, the (‘s) indicates possession.
Choose the alternative which presents the correct ones.
A Brief and Simplified Description of Papermaking
The paper we use today is created from individual wood fibers that are first suspended in water and then pressed and dried into sheets. The process of converting the wood to a suspension of wood fibers in water is known as pulp making, while the manufacture of the dried and pressed sheets of paper is formally termed papermaking. The process of making paper has undergone a steady evolution, and larger and more sophisticated equipment and better technology continue to improve it.
The Wood yard and Wood rooms
The process at Androscogging began with receiving wood in the form of chips or of logs 4 or 8 feet in length. From 6 AM to 10 PM a steady stream of trucks and railroad cars were weighted and unloaded. About 40 percent were suplied by independents who were paid by weight their logs. The mill also received wood chips from lumber mills in the area. The chips and logs were stored in mammoth piles with separate piles for wood of different species (such as pine, spruce, hemlock).
When needed, logs were floated in flumes......(1).....the wood yard.....(2).....one of the mill’s three wood rooms. There, bark was rubbed......(3)........in long, ribbed debarking drums by tumbling the logs against one another. The logs then fell into a chipper;......(4)......seconds a large log was reduced to a pile of chips approximately 1 inch by 1 inch by 1/4 inch.
The chips were stored in silos. There were separate silos for softwoods (spruce, fir, hemlock, and pine) and hardwoods (maple, oak, beech, and birch). This separate and temporary storage of chips permitted the controlled mixing of chips into the precise recipe for the grade of paper being produced.
The wood chips were then sorted through large, flat vibrating screens. Oversized chips were rechipped, and ones that were too small were collected for burning in the power house. (The mill provided approximately 20 percent of all its own steam and electricity needs from burning waste. An additional 50 percent of total electricity needs was produced by harnessing the river for hydroelectric power.)
Once drawn from the silo into the digesters, there was no stopping the flow of chips into paper.
Pulpmaking
The pulp made at Androscoggin was of two types: Kraft pulp (produced chemically) and ground wood pulp (produced mechanically). Kraft pulp was far more important to the high quality white papers produced at Androscoggin, accounting for 80 percent of all the pulp used. Kraft pulp makes strong paper. (Kraft is German for strength. A German invented the Kraft pulp process in 1884.) A paper’s strength generally comes from the overlap and binding of long fibers of softwood; only chemically was it initially possible to separate long wood fibers for suspension in water. Hardwood fibers are generally smaller and thinner and help smooth the paper and make it less porous.
The ground wood pulping process was simpler and less expensive than the Kraft process. It took high quality spruce and fir logs and pressed them continuously against a revolving stone that broke apart the wood’s fibers. The fibers, however, were smaller than those produced by the Kraft process and, although used to make newsprint, were useful at Androscoggin in providing “fill” for the coated publication gloss papers of machines 2 and 3, as will be described later.
(A)The chemical Kraft process worked by dissolving the lignin that bonds wood fibers together. (B) It did this in a tall pressure cooker, called a digester, by “cooking” the chips in a solution of caustic soda (NaOH) and sodium sulfide (Na2S), which was termed the “white liquor.” (C)The two digesters at Androscoggin were continuous digesters; chips and liquor went into the top, were cooked together as they slowly settled down to the bottom, and were drawn off the bottom after about three hours. (D) By this time, the white liquor had changed chemically to “black liquor’’; the digested chips were then separated from this black liquor. (E)
In what was known as the “cold blow” process, the hot, pressurized chips were gradually cooled and depressurized. A “cold liquor’’ (170°F) was introduced to the bottom of the digester and served both to cool and to transport the digested chips to a diffusion washer that washed and depressurized the chips. Because so much of the lignin bonding the fibers together had been removed, the wood fiber in the chips literally fell apart at this stage.
The black liquor from the digester entered a separate four-step recovery process. Over 95 percent of the black liquor could be reconstituted as white liquor, thereby saving on chemical costs and significantly lowering pollution. The four-step process involved (1) washing the black liquor from the cooked fiber to produce weak black liquor, (2) evaporating the weak black liquor to a thicker consistency, (3) combustion of this heavy black liquor with sodium sulfate (Na2SO4 ), and redissolving the smelt, yielding a “green liquor” (sodium carbonate + sodium sulfide), and (4) adding lime, which reacted with the green liquor to produce white liquor. The last step was known as causticization.
Meanwhile, the wood-fiber pulp was purged of impurities like bark and dirt by mechanical screening and by spinning the mixture in centrifugal cleaners. The pulp was then concentrated by removing water from it so that it could be stored and bleached more economically.
By this time, depending on the type of pulp being made, it had been between 3 1/2 and 5 hours since the chips had entered the pulp mill.
All the Kraft pulp was then bleached. Bleaching took between 5 and 6 hours. It consisted of a three-step process in which (1) a mix of chlorine (Cl2 ) and chlorine dioxide (CIO2 ) was introduced to the pulp and the pulp was washed; (2) a patented mix of sodium hydroxide (NaOH), liquid oxygen, and hydrogen peroxide (H2 O2 ) was then added to the pulp and the pulp was again washed; and (3) chlorine dioxide (ClO2 ) was introduced and the pulp washed a final time. The result was like fluffy cream of wheat. By this time the pulp was nearly ready to be made into paper.
From the bleachery, the stock of pulp was held for a short time in storage (a maximum of 16 hours) and then proceeded through a series of blending operations that permitted a string of additives (for example, filler clay, resins, brighteners, alum, dyes) to be mixed into the pulp according to the recipe for the paper grade being produced. Here, too, “broke” (paper wastes from the mill itself) was recycled into the pulp. The pulp was then once again cleaned and blended into an even consistency before moving to the papermaking machine itself.
It made a difference whether the broke was of coated
or uncoated paper, and whether it was white or colored. White, uncoated paper could be recycled immediately. Colored, uncoated paper had to be rebleached.
Coated papers, because of the clays in them, could not
be reclaimed.
The underlined is closest to the meaning to:
A Brief and Simplified Description of Papermaking
The paper we use today is created from individual wood fibers that are first suspended in water and then pressed and dried into sheets. The process of converting the wood to a suspension of wood fibers in water is known as pulp making, while the manufacture of the dried and pressed sheets of paper is formally termed papermaking. The process of making paper has undergone a steady evolution, and larger and more sophisticated equipment and better technology continue to improve it.
The Wood yard and Wood rooms
The process at Androscogging began with receiving wood in the form of chips or of logs 4 or 8 feet in length. From 6 AM to 10 PM a steady stream of trucks and railroad cars were weighted and unloaded. About 40 percent were suplied by independents who were paid by weight their logs. The mill also received wood chips from lumber mills in the area. The chips and logs were stored in mammoth piles with separate piles for wood of different species (such as pine, spruce, hemlock).
When needed, logs were floated in flumes......(1).....the wood yard.....(2).....one of the mill’s three wood rooms. There, bark was rubbed......(3)........in long, ribbed debarking drums by tumbling the logs against one another. The logs then fell into a chipper;......(4)......seconds a large log was reduced to a pile of chips approximately 1 inch by 1 inch by 1/4 inch.
The chips were stored in silos. There were separate silos for softwoods (spruce, fir, hemlock, and pine) and hardwoods (maple, oak, beech, and birch). This separate and temporary storage of chips permitted the controlled mixing of chips into the precise recipe for the grade of paper being produced.
The wood chips were then sorted through large, flat vibrating screens. Oversized chips were rechipped, and ones that were too small were collected for burning in the power house. (The mill provided approximately 20 percent of all its own steam and electricity needs from burning waste. An additional 50 percent of total electricity needs was produced by harnessing the river for hydroelectric power.)
Once drawn from the silo into the digesters, there was no stopping the flow of chips into paper.
Pulpmaking
The pulp made at Androscoggin was of two types: Kraft pulp (produced chemically) and ground wood pulp (produced mechanically). Kraft pulp was far more important to the high quality white papers produced at Androscoggin, accounting for 80 percent of all the pulp used. Kraft pulp makes strong paper. (Kraft is German for strength. A German invented the Kraft pulp process in 1884.) A paper’s strength generally comes from the overlap and binding of long fibers of softwood; only chemically was it initially possible to separate long wood fibers for suspension in water. Hardwood fibers are generally smaller and thinner and help smooth the paper and make it less porous.
The ground wood pulping process was simpler and less expensive than the Kraft process. It took high quality spruce and fir logs and pressed them continuously against a revolving stone that broke apart the wood’s fibers. The fibers, however, were smaller than those produced by the Kraft process and, although used to make newsprint, were useful at Androscoggin in providing “fill” for the coated publication gloss papers of machines 2 and 3, as will be described later.
(A)The chemical Kraft process worked by dissolving the lignin that bonds wood fibers together. (B) It did this in a tall pressure cooker, called a digester, by “cooking” the chips in a solution of caustic soda (NaOH) and sodium sulfide (Na2S), which was termed the “white liquor.” (C)The two digesters at Androscoggin were continuous digesters; chips and liquor went into the top, were cooked together as they slowly settled down to the bottom, and were drawn off the bottom after about three hours. (D) By this time, the white liquor had changed chemically to “black liquor’’; the digested chips were then separated from this black liquor. (E)
In what was known as the “cold blow” process, the hot, pressurized chips were gradually cooled and depressurized. A “cold liquor’’ (170°F) was introduced to the bottom of the digester and served both to cool and to transport the digested chips to a diffusion washer that washed and depressurized the chips. Because so much of the lignin bonding the fibers together had been removed, the wood fiber in the chips literally fell apart at this stage.
The black liquor from the digester entered a separate four-step recovery process. Over 95 percent of the black liquor could be reconstituted as white liquor, thereby saving on chemical costs and significantly lowering pollution. The four-step process involved (1) washing the black liquor from the cooked fiber to produce weak black liquor, (2) evaporating the weak black liquor to a thicker consistency, (3) combustion of this heavy black liquor with sodium sulfate (Na2SO4 ), and redissolving the smelt, yielding a “green liquor” (sodium carbonate + sodium sulfide), and (4) adding lime, which reacted with the green liquor to produce white liquor. The last step was known as causticization.
Meanwhile, the wood-fiber pulp was purged of impurities like bark and dirt by mechanical screening and by spinning the mixture in centrifugal cleaners. The pulp was then concentrated by removing water from it so that it could be stored and bleached more economically.
By this time, depending on the type of pulp being made, it had been between 3 1/2 and 5 hours since the chips had entered the pulp mill.
All the Kraft pulp was then bleached. Bleaching took between 5 and 6 hours. It consisted of a three-step process in which (1) a mix of chlorine (Cl2 ) and chlorine dioxide (CIO2 ) was introduced to the pulp and the pulp was washed; (2) a patented mix of sodium hydroxide (NaOH), liquid oxygen, and hydrogen peroxide (H2 O2 ) was then added to the pulp and the pulp was again washed; and (3) chlorine dioxide (ClO2 ) was introduced and the pulp washed a final time. The result was like fluffy cream of wheat. By this time the pulp was nearly ready to be made into paper.
From the bleachery, the stock of pulp was held for a short time in storage (a maximum of 16 hours) and then proceeded through a series of blending operations that permitted a string of additives (for example, filler clay, resins, brighteners, alum, dyes) to be mixed into the pulp according to the recipe for the paper grade being produced. Here, too, “broke” (paper wastes from the mill itself) was recycled into the pulp. The pulp was then once again cleaned and blended into an even consistency before moving to the papermaking machine itself.
It made a difference whether the broke was of coated
or uncoated paper, and whether it was white or colored. White, uncoated paper could be recycled immediately. Colored, uncoated paper had to be rebleached.
Coated papers, because of the clays in them, could not
be reclaimed.
A Brief and Simplified Description of Papermaking
The paper we use today is created from individual wood fibers that are first suspended in water and then pressed and dried into sheets. The process of converting the wood to a suspension of wood fibers in water is known as pulp making, while the manufacture of the dried and pressed sheets of paper is formally termed papermaking. The process of making paper has undergone a steady evolution, and larger and more sophisticated equipment and better technology continue to improve it.
The Wood yard and Wood rooms
The process at Androscogging began with receiving wood in the form of chips or of logs 4 or 8 feet in length. From 6 AM to 10 PM a steady stream of trucks and railroad cars were weighted and unloaded. About 40 percent were suplied by independents who were paid by weight their logs. The mill also received wood chips from lumber mills in the area. The chips and logs were stored in mammoth piles with separate piles for wood of different species (such as pine, spruce, hemlock).
When needed, logs were floated in flumes......(1).....the wood yard.....(2).....one of the mill’s three wood rooms. There, bark was rubbed......(3)........in long, ribbed debarking drums by tumbling the logs against one another. The logs then fell into a chipper;......(4)......seconds a large log was reduced to a pile of chips approximately 1 inch by 1 inch by 1/4 inch.
The chips were stored in silos. There were separate silos for softwoods (spruce, fir, hemlock, and pine) and hardwoods (maple, oak, beech, and birch). This separate and temporary storage of chips permitted the controlled mixing of chips into the precise recipe for the grade of paper being produced.
The wood chips were then sorted through large, flat vibrating screens. Oversized chips were rechipped, and ones that were too small were collected for burning in the power house. (The mill provided approximately 20 percent of all its own steam and electricity needs from burning waste. An additional 50 percent of total electricity needs was produced by harnessing the river for hydroelectric power.)
Once drawn from the silo into the digesters, there was no stopping the flow of chips into paper.
Pulpmaking
The pulp made at Androscoggin was of two types: Kraft pulp (produced chemically) and ground wood pulp (produced mechanically). Kraft pulp was far more important to the high quality white papers produced at Androscoggin, accounting for 80 percent of all the pulp used. Kraft pulp makes strong paper. (Kraft is German for strength. A German invented the Kraft pulp process in 1884.) A paper’s strength generally comes from the overlap and binding of long fibers of softwood; only chemically was it initially possible to separate long wood fibers for suspension in water. Hardwood fibers are generally smaller and thinner and help smooth the paper and make it less porous.
The ground wood pulping process was simpler and less expensive than the Kraft process. It took high quality spruce and fir logs and pressed them continuously against a revolving stone that broke apart the wood’s fibers. The fibers, however, were smaller than those produced by the Kraft process and, although used to make newsprint, were useful at Androscoggin in providing “fill” for the coated publication gloss papers of machines 2 and 3, as will be described later.
(A)The chemical Kraft process worked by dissolving the lignin that bonds wood fibers together. (B) It did this in a tall pressure cooker, called a digester, by “cooking” the chips in a solution of caustic soda (NaOH) and sodium sulfide (Na2S), which was termed the “white liquor.” (C)The two digesters at Androscoggin were continuous digesters; chips and liquor went into the top, were cooked together as they slowly settled down to the bottom, and were drawn off the bottom after about three hours. (D) By this time, the white liquor had changed chemically to “black liquor’’; the digested chips were then separated from this black liquor. (E)
In what was known as the “cold blow” process, the hot, pressurized chips were gradually cooled and depressurized. A “cold liquor’’ (170°F) was introduced to the bottom of the digester and served both to cool and to transport the digested chips to a diffusion washer that washed and depressurized the chips. Because so much of the lignin bonding the fibers together had been removed, the wood fiber in the chips literally fell apart at this stage.
The black liquor from the digester entered a separate four-step recovery process. Over 95 percent of the black liquor could be reconstituted as white liquor, thereby saving on chemical costs and significantly lowering pollution. The four-step process involved (1) washing the black liquor from the cooked fiber to produce weak black liquor, (2) evaporating the weak black liquor to a thicker consistency, (3) combustion of this heavy black liquor with sodium sulfate (Na2SO4 ), and redissolving the smelt, yielding a “green liquor” (sodium carbonate + sodium sulfide), and (4) adding lime, which reacted with the green liquor to produce white liquor. The last step was known as causticization.
Meanwhile, the wood-fiber pulp was purged of impurities like bark and dirt by mechanical screening and by spinning the mixture in centrifugal cleaners. The pulp was then concentrated by removing water from it so that it could be stored and bleached more economically.
By this time, depending on the type of pulp being made, it had been between 3 1/2 and 5 hours since the chips had entered the pulp mill.
All the Kraft pulp was then bleached. Bleaching took between 5 and 6 hours. It consisted of a three-step process in which (1) a mix of chlorine (Cl2 ) and chlorine dioxide (CIO2 ) was introduced to the pulp and the pulp was washed; (2) a patented mix of sodium hydroxide (NaOH), liquid oxygen, and hydrogen peroxide (H2 O2 ) was then added to the pulp and the pulp was again washed; and (3) chlorine dioxide (ClO2 ) was introduced and the pulp washed a final time. The result was like fluffy cream of wheat. By this time the pulp was nearly ready to be made into paper.
From the bleachery, the stock of pulp was held for a short time in storage (a maximum of 16 hours) and then proceeded through a series of blending operations that permitted a string of additives (for example, filler clay, resins, brighteners, alum, dyes) to be mixed into the pulp according to the recipe for the paper grade being produced. Here, too, “broke” (paper wastes from the mill itself) was recycled into the pulp. The pulp was then once again cleaned and blended into an even consistency before moving to the papermaking machine itself.
It made a difference whether the broke was of coated
or uncoated paper, and whether it was white or colored. White, uncoated paper could be recycled immediately. Colored, uncoated paper had to be rebleached.
Coated papers, because of the clays in them, could not
be reclaimed.
A Brief and Simplified Description of Papermaking
The paper we use today is created from individual wood fibers that are first suspended in water and then pressed and dried into sheets. The process of converting the wood to a suspension of wood fibers in water is known as pulp making, while the manufacture of the dried and pressed sheets of paper is formally termed papermaking. The process of making paper has undergone a steady evolution, and larger and more sophisticated equipment and better technology continue to improve it.
The Wood yard and Wood rooms
The process at Androscogging began with receiving wood in the form of chips or of logs 4 or 8 feet in length. From 6 AM to 10 PM a steady stream of trucks and railroad cars were weighted and unloaded. About 40 percent were suplied by independents who were paid by weight their logs. The mill also received wood chips from lumber mills in the area. The chips and logs were stored in mammoth piles with separate piles for wood of different species (such as pine, spruce, hemlock).
When needed, logs were floated in flumes......(1).....the wood yard.....(2).....one of the mill’s three wood rooms. There, bark was rubbed......(3)........in long, ribbed debarking drums by tumbling the logs against one another. The logs then fell into a chipper;......(4)......seconds a large log was reduced to a pile of chips approximately 1 inch by 1 inch by 1/4 inch.
The chips were stored in silos. There were separate silos for softwoods (spruce, fir, hemlock, and pine) and hardwoods (maple, oak, beech, and birch). This separate and temporary storage of chips permitted the controlled mixing of chips into the precise recipe for the grade of paper being produced.
The wood chips were then sorted through large, flat vibrating screens. Oversized chips were rechipped, and ones that were too small were collected for burning in the power house. (The mill provided approximately 20 percent of all its own steam and electricity needs from burning waste. An additional 50 percent of total electricity needs was produced by harnessing the river for hydroelectric power.)
Once drawn from the silo into the digesters, there was no stopping the flow of chips into paper.
Pulpmaking
The pulp made at Androscoggin was of two types: Kraft pulp (produced chemically) and ground wood pulp (produced mechanically). Kraft pulp was far more important to the high quality white papers produced at Androscoggin, accounting for 80 percent of all the pulp used. Kraft pulp makes strong paper. (Kraft is German for strength. A German invented the Kraft pulp process in 1884.) A paper’s strength generally comes from the overlap and binding of long fibers of softwood; only chemically was it initially possible to separate long wood fibers for suspension in water. Hardwood fibers are generally smaller and thinner and help smooth the paper and make it less porous.
The ground wood pulping process was simpler and less expensive than the Kraft process. It took high quality spruce and fir logs and pressed them continuously against a revolving stone that broke apart the wood’s fibers. The fibers, however, were smaller than those produced by the Kraft process and, although used to make newsprint, were useful at Androscoggin in providing “fill” for the coated publication gloss papers of machines 2 and 3, as will be described later.
(A)The chemical Kraft process worked by dissolving the lignin that bonds wood fibers together. (B) It did this in a tall pressure cooker, called a digester, by “cooking” the chips in a solution of caustic soda (NaOH) and sodium sulfide (Na2S), which was termed the “white liquor.” (C)The two digesters at Androscoggin were continuous digesters; chips and liquor went into the top, were cooked together as they slowly settled down to the bottom, and were drawn off the bottom after about three hours. (D) By this time, the white liquor had changed chemically to “black liquor’’; the digested chips were then separated from this black liquor. (E)
In what was known as the “cold blow” process, the hot, pressurized chips were gradually cooled and depressurized. A “cold liquor’’ (170°F) was introduced to the bottom of the digester and served both to cool and to transport the digested chips to a diffusion washer that washed and depressurized the chips. Because so much of the lignin bonding the fibers together had been removed, the wood fiber in the chips literally fell apart at this stage.
The black liquor from the digester entered a separate four-step recovery process. Over 95 percent of the black liquor could be reconstituted as white liquor, thereby saving on chemical costs and significantly lowering pollution. The four-step process involved (1) washing the black liquor from the cooked fiber to produce weak black liquor, (2) evaporating the weak black liquor to a thicker consistency, (3) combustion of this heavy black liquor with sodium sulfate (Na2SO4 ), and redissolving the smelt, yielding a “green liquor” (sodium carbonate + sodium sulfide), and (4) adding lime, which reacted with the green liquor to produce white liquor. The last step was known as causticization.
Meanwhile, the wood-fiber pulp was purged of impurities like bark and dirt by mechanical screening and by spinning the mixture in centrifugal cleaners. The pulp was then concentrated by removing water from it so that it could be stored and bleached more economically.
By this time, depending on the type of pulp being made, it had been between 3 1/2 and 5 hours since the chips had entered the pulp mill.
All the Kraft pulp was then bleached. Bleaching took between 5 and 6 hours. It consisted of a three-step process in which (1) a mix of chlorine (Cl2 ) and chlorine dioxide (CIO2 ) was introduced to the pulp and the pulp was washed; (2) a patented mix of sodium hydroxide (NaOH), liquid oxygen, and hydrogen peroxide (H2 O2 ) was then added to the pulp and the pulp was again washed; and (3) chlorine dioxide (ClO2 ) was introduced and the pulp washed a final time. The result was like fluffy cream of wheat. By this time the pulp was nearly ready to be made into paper.
From the bleachery, the stock of pulp was held for a short time in storage (a maximum of 16 hours) and then proceeded through a series of blending operations that permitted a string of additives (for example, filler clay, resins, brighteners, alum, dyes) to be mixed into the pulp according to the recipe for the paper grade being produced. Here, too, “broke” (paper wastes from the mill itself) was recycled into the pulp. The pulp was then once again cleaned and blended into an even consistency before moving to the papermaking machine itself.
It made a difference whether the broke was of coated
or uncoated paper, and whether it was white or colored. White, uncoated paper could be recycled immediately. Colored, uncoated paper had to be rebleached.
Coated papers, because of the clays in them, could not
be reclaimed.
