Validating continuous kraft digester kinetic models with online NIR measurements

Representative families of models for the chemical kinetics of kraft pulping taken from the literature spanning the last three decades are compared using data obtained from a series of autoclave cooks and an instrumented laboratory circulation digester. The differences within families is slight, and they reasonably explain the data with fitted parameters, and more crucially, even when using original parameters. However the Purdue model arguably fits the measured data better for the more modern cooking schemes, and has the advantage that it describes the kinetics of hemicelluloses such as arabinoxylan which are needed for for pulp property predictions.