ORIGINAL Studies on the effect of prehydrolysis and amine in cooking liquor on producing dissolving pulp from jute (Corchorus capsularis) M. Sarwar Jahan Received: 28 July 2007 / Published online: 2 September 2008 Ó Springer-Verlag 2008 Abstract Dissolving pulps are the raw materials for the production of many dif- ferent end-products. Jute is a very good source of cellulose. In this investigation, jute fiber was subjected to pulping in soda process in order to produce dissolving pulp under different prehydrolysis conditions and compared with prehydrolysed kraft pulp from jute. An increase of the prehydrolysis temperature or H 2 SO 4 in prehydrolysis liquor increased the a-cellulose content and decreased the viscosity of pulp. The effect of ethylenediamine in soda liquor was also investigated when producing dissolving pulp. Jute fiber produced pulp having 90–97% a-cellulose. Ethylenediamine in soda liquor produced pulp of higher yield, viscosity and higher a-cellulose content than that of prehydrolysis soda or kraft pulp. The a-cellulose content and viscosity were increased with the increase of amine in soda liquor. The kappa number of dissolving pulp from jute was very low (9–5), which indicated that less bleaching chemicals are required for bleaching. The bleachability of soda- ethylenediamine pulp was lower than prehydrolysed soda and kraft pulp in ECF bleaching sequences. The bleachability of soda-ethylenediamine pulp was improved at the sacrifice of pulp yield when prehydrolysis was done prior to pulping. The alkali solubility S 10 and S 18 were 4–9 and 2–4%, respectively. Introduction Jute used to play an important role in the socio-economic development of Bangladesh. A significant portion of the total export earnings was dependent on jute and related products in those days (Jahan et al. 2007). The chemical and morphological characteristics of jute favor it as pulping raw material (Nahar 1987). M. S. Jahan (&) Pulp and Paper Research Division, BCSIR Laboratories, Dr Qudra-I-Khuda Road, Dhaka 1205, Bangladesh e-mail: m_sarwar@bdonline.com 123 Wood Sci Technol (2009) 43:213–224 DOI 10.1007/s00226-008-0213-6