Environmentally friendly wet-end paper reinforcement agents Asif Hasan, Chen Gong, Biljana Bujanovic*, Tom Amidon Department of Paper and Bioprocess Engineering SUNY ESF, Syracuse, New York-13210 Abstract Hot-water extraction of hardwoods within the biorefinery permits a higher rate of delignification during kraft pulping. Pulps from hot-water extracted woodchips can have the same kappa number produced at lower H-factors with the use of lesser amount of chemicals compared to conventional pulps from unextracted woodchips. Biorefinery kraft pulp offers a relatively higher sheet bulk compared to conventional kraft pulp which contributes to better opacity and absorption properties in paper. However, due to lower hemicelluloses content of the pulp, inter-fiber bonding is reduced and hence the strength-to-weight ratio of paper produced from biorefinery pulp needs to be improved to be competitive with conventional pulps. In the present study, we report the results of reinforcement of paper made from biorefinery kraft pulp with the two most widely used biopolymers; polylactic acid and cationic starch. Introduction The demand for alternative and sustainable sources of fuel, chemicals, and energy has increased geratly in recent years due to the high price of fossil resources, government policies to reduce dependence on foreign oil and to promote alternatives, and efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Significant efforts have been made to evaluate the use of renewable feedstocks including lignocellulosics for the production of fuels, solvents, chemicals, and plastics, and to develop biorefineries. A biorefinery based on hardwoods, such as northern hardwoods and plantation-grown willow biomass has been developed recently (Amidon et al. 2008). In this biorefinery, the first step is hot-water extraction (HWE) performed at temperatures up to 165 ºC and aimed at dissolving the relatively easily accessible hardwood hemicelluloses, mainly xylans, while avoiding further degradation of the resulting mixture of soluble monosaccharides and oligosaccharides. The two streams produced in HWE, hot-water extract and hot-water-extracted wood, are processed to produce a rich palette of products. PaperCon 2011 Page 1667