Question: Carl Daniel Ekman (March 17, 1845 – November 3, 1904) was a Swedish chemical engineer who invented the form of the sulfite process of wood pulp manufacturing which was first established on a firm commercial basis, helping to replace rags as the main raw material of paper with wood pulp, he opened the Ekman Pulp and Paper Company mill in Northfleet, Kent near the mouth of the Thames River in 1886, Kent is a county in South East England and is how many of the home counties?

full_context: Document 1: SCA (company): Svenska Cellulosa Aktiebolaget (SCA, English: "Swedish Cellulose Company") is a Swedish timber, pulp and paper manufacturer with headquarters in Stockholm. It has approximately 44,000 employees and a turnover of approximately SEK 104 billion (€11,1 billion). Its main products include personal publication papers, solid-wood products and forest-based biofuel. The company's ten largest markets are Germany, United Kingdom, United States, France, Sweden, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Denmark, Australia, Mexico and Belgium. SCA is Europe's largest private owner of forest land, with 2.6 million hectares, the size of Macedonia. (Sweden's largest forest owner is the governmental Sveaskog with 3.3 million hectares, an area slightly larger than Moldova.)
Document 2: Claus process: The Claus process is the most significant gas desulfurizing process, recovering elemental sulfur from gaseous hydrogen sulfide. First patented in 1883 by the chemist Carl Friedrich Claus, the Claus process has become the industry standard. C. F. Claus was born in Kassel in the German State of Hessen in 1827, and studied chemistry in Marburg before he emigrated to England in 1852. Claus died in London in the year 1900.
Document 3: Kent: Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south west. The county also shares borders with Essex along the estuary of the River Thames, and with the French department of Pas-de-Calais along the English Channel. The county town is Maidstone.
Document 4: Soda pulping: Soda pulping is a chemical process for making wood pulp with sodium hydroxide as the cooking chemical. In the "Soda-AQ" process, anthraquinone (AQ) may be used as a pulping additive to decrease the carbohydrate degradation. The soda process gives pulp with lower tear strength than other chemical pulping processes (sulfite process and kraft process), but has still limited use for easy pulped materials like straw and some hardwoods.
Document 5: Matthias Koops: Matthias Koops (active 1789–1805) was a British paper-maker who invented the first practical processes for manufacturing paper from wood pulp, straw, or recycled waste paper, without the necessity of including expensive linen or cotton rags.
Document 6: Middlesex: Middlesex ( , abbreviation: Middx) is a historic county in south-east England. It is now entirely within the wider urbanised area of London. Its area is now also mostly within the ceremonial county of Greater London, with small sections in other neighbouring ceremonial counties. It was established in the Anglo-Saxon system from the territory of the Middle Saxons, and existed as an official unit until 1965. The historic county includes land stretching north of the River Thames from 3 mi east to 17 mi west of the City of London with the rivers Colne and Lea and a ridge of hills as the other boundaries. The largely low-lying county, dominated by clay in its north and alluvium on gravel in its south, was the second smallest county by area in 1831.
Document 7: Surrey: Surrey is a county in the South East England and is one of the home counties. It shares borders with Kent to the east, East Sussex to the south-east, West Sussex to the south, Hampshire to the west and south-west, and Berkshire to the north-west and Greater London to the north-east. The county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits outside its jurisdiction in Kingston upon Thames, a town which has been administered as part of Greater London since 1965. With a resident population of 1.1 million, Surrey is the most densely populated and third-most-populous county in the South East region.
Document 8: Kentwood (Reading ward): Kentwood is an electoral ward of the Borough of Reading, in the English county of Berkshire. It consists of the northern part of the suburb of Tilehurst, in the west of Reading, south of the River Thames. The ward is bordered by Mapledurham and Battle wards to the east, and Norcot and Tilehurst wards to the south. To the west the ward is bordered by the reduced civil parish of Tilehurst in the district of West Berkshire which is the remainder of the larger ancient parish, before the expansion of the Borough of Reading. The ward has schools and churches bearing a Tilehurst, rather than Reading name.
Document 9: Sulfite process: The sulfite process produces wood pulp which is almost pure cellulose fibers by using various salts of sulfurous acid to extract the lignin from wood chips in large pressure vessels called digesters. The salts used in the pulping process are either sulfites (SO), or bisulfites (HSO), depending on the pH. The counter ion can be sodium (Na), calcium (Ca), potassium (K), magnesium (Mg) or ammonium (NH).
Document 10: Carl Daniel Ekman: Carl Daniel Ekman (March 17, 1845 – November 3, 1904) was a Swedish chemical engineer who invented the form of the sulfite process of wood pulp manufacturing which was first established on a firm commercial basis, helping to replace rags as the main raw material of paper with wood pulp. The process was developed at Bergvik, Sweden from 1871–1874, In 1879, he emigrated to England, and opened the Ekman Pulp and Paper Company mill in Northfleet, Kent near the mouth of the Thames River in 1886. He was also a consulting engineer and helped establish mills in Lachendorf, Celle, Germany, Dieppe, France, Rumford, Rhode Island, St. Petersburg, Russia, Korfu and Italy. After contracting malaria in French Guiana and losing a lawsuit on pollution of a Northfleet limestone quarry, he died bankrupt in Gravesend, Kent.
Document 11: Tonbridge: Tonbridge (historically spelled "Tunbridge") is a market town in the English county of Kent, with a population of 40,356 in 2015. It is located upon the River Medway, approximately 4 mi north of Royal Tunbridge Wells, 12 mi south west of Maidstone and 29 mi south east of London. It belongs to the administrative borough of Tonbridge and Malling (population 120,805 in 2011).
Document 12: Kent, Sierra Leone: Kent is a coastal fishing village around the peninsular in the Western Area Rural District of Sierra Leone. Kent lies approximately thirty miles east of Freetown. Kent is known for its large beaches and its strong fishing community.
Document 13: Paper mill: A paper mill is a factory devoted to making paper from vegetable fibres such as wood pulp, old rags and other ingredients. Prior to the invention and adoption of the Fourdrinier machine and other types of paper machine that use an endless belt, all paper in a paper mill was made by hand, one sheet at a time, by specialized laborers.
Document 14: Essex: Essex is a county in the East of England immediately north-east of London and is one of the home counties. It borders the counties of Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south and London to the south-west. The county town is Chelmsford, which is the only city in the county.
Document 15: Kraft process: The kraft process (also known as kraft pulping or sulfate process) is a process for conversion of wood into wood pulp, which consists of almost pure cellulose fibers, the main component of paper. The kraft process entails treatment of wood chips with a hot mixture of water, sodium hydroxide, and sodium sulfide, known as white liquor, that breaks the bonds that link lignin, hemicellulose, and cellulose. The technology entails several steps, both mechanical and chemical. It is the dominant method for producing paper. In some situations, the process has been controversial because kraft plants can release smelly products and in some situations produce substantial liquid wastes.
ground_truth: one