This study assesses the potential of UV light as method to bleach eucalyptus pulps in different steps of their chemical bleaching process in a pulp mill. Higher brightness increasing were obtained on dirtier pulps, that is, alkaline washed and oxygen delignified pulps. In any case, photobleaching shows first-order kinetics. Rate of chromophores removal is proportional to the chromophores content in fiber surface. Complementarily, thermogravimetric analysis proved that UV light (400 nm wavelength) do not damages fiber integrityPostprint (published version
