The fibre length and the size of the refined and dried
fibres were measured by image analysis using a laser-based
PQMTM 1000 pulp quality monitoring system (Metso Paper,
Sundsvall, Sweden). The average fibre length, the fibre length
distribution, and other properties related to fibre quality were
determined (Table 4). The amount of short fibres and dust particleswere
evaluated for each trial.The oversized fibre bundlesare defined as shives and the shive contentwas determined by
the PQM 1000 instrument and the Pulmac shive analyzer with
0.15mm slots (Pulmac Instruments International, Vermont,
Canada).