Mercerised pulp is a bleached pulp

Pulp (paper)

Pulp is a lignocellulosic fibrous material prepared by chemically or mechanically separating cellulose fibres from wood, fibre crops or waste paper. Wood pulp is the most common raw material in papermaking.-History:...

 that is treated with hot dilluted alkali to get extra high bulk and high porosity. The pulp feels and looks similar to a cotton ball.

Manufacture

Mercerising of pulp is a post treatment of fully bleaced

Bleaching of wood pulp

Bleaching of wood pulp is the chemical processing carried out on various types of wood pulp to decrease the color of the pulp, so that it becomes whiter. The main use of wood pulp is to make paper where whiteness is an important characteristic...

 pulp normally of SBSK

SBSK (pulp)

SBSK is an acronym for Southern bleached softwood kraft. It this is a wood pulp mainly produced in the southern USA. The main raw materials are slash pine, longleaf pine, shortleaf pine, loblolly pine and virginia pine.-Properties:...

. The pulp is steeped in hot dillute caustic soda. The fibres of the pulp swells and the hydroxyl groups of the cellulose

Cellulose

Cellulose is an organic compound with the formula , a polysaccharide consisting of a linear chain of several hundred to over ten thousand β linked D-glucose units....

 is crosslinked. The remaining hemicellulose

Hemicellulose

A hemicellulose is any of several heteropolymers , such as arabinoxylans, present along with cellulose in almost all plant cell walls. While cellulose is crystalline, strong, and resistant to hydrolysis, hemicellulose has a random, amorphous structure with little strength...

 is washed out and the pulp will therefore no longer respond to refining.