Effect of water vapor in air on thermal degradation of paper at high temperature

Thermal degradation of lignocellulosic materials has been studied widely because of its importance in several applications. While a variety of thermal treatment setups has been proposed, this paper introduces a thermal treatment method where high temperature is combined with presence of water vapor in an atmospheric oven chamber. The performance of the device was evaluated at temperature and volume fraction of water vapor ranges of 175-300 °C and 1-98%, respectively. The impact of the treatment was assessed by observing the changes in paper sheets, specifically brightness, light absorption coefficient, burst strength, ultraviolet resonance Raman spectra and the degree of polymerization of cellulose. The results demonstrated that the adapted thermal treatment device functions within the tested ranges of temperature and volume fraction of water vapor. In this study water vapor was found to accelerate hydrolytic thermal degradation of fully bleached paper sheets in terms of thermal yellowing and strength deterioration. In contrast, the empirical findings with lignin-containing paper provided new information on how the residual lignin increases its resistance towards water vapor introduced thermal degradation. This was demonstrated by the results of ultraviolet resonance Raman spectra and light absorption coefficient, which suggested that the thermal degradation of lignin is substantially enhanced in the presence of oxygen.