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Paper

Description
Paper is a thin material produced by pressing together
moist fibres of cellulose pulp derived from wood, rags
or grasses, and drying them into flexible sheets. It is a
versatile material with many uses,
including writing, printing, packaging, cleaning, and a
number of industrial and construction processes.
The word "paper" is etymologically derived
from papyrus, Ancient Greek for the Cyperus
papyrus plant. Papyrus is a thick, paper-like material
produced from the pith of the Cyperus papyrus plant
which was used in ancient Egypt and
other Mediterranean societies for writing long before
Paper was used in China. Papyrus however are plants
pressed and dried, while paper is made from fibers
whose properties have been changed by maceration or
disintegration.

Where the product was produced

Paper is a white material primarily used for


writing, first invented in ancient China. Although
contemporary precursors such
as papyrus and mate existed in the Mediterranean
world and pre-Columbian Americas, respectively, these
materials are not defined as true paper. The
first papermaking process was documented in China
during the Eastern Han period (25-220 C.E.), traditionally
attributed to the court official CaiLun. During the 8th
century, Chinese papermaking spread to the Islamic
world, where pulp mills and paper mills were used for
money making. By the 11th century, papermaking was
brought to medieval Europe, where it was refined with
the earliest known paper mills utilizing waterwheels.
Later Western improvements to the papermaking
process came in the 19th century with the invention
of wood-based papers.
Precursors: papyrus and amate

Roman portraiture fresco of a young man with a papyrus scroll, from Herculaneum, 1st century AD

Archaeological evidence of papermaking predates the


traditional attribution given to CaiLun, an imperial
eunuch official of the Han dynasty (202 BC-AD 220), thus
the exact date or inventor of paper in Gansu province,
and was likely part of a map, dated to 179-41 BC.
Fragments of paper have also been found at Dunhuang
dated to 65 BC and at Yumen pass, dated to 8 BC.
"CaiLun's" invention, recorded hundreds of years
after it took place, is dated to 105 AD. The innovation is
a type of paper made of mulberry and
other bastfibres along with fishing nets, old rags,
and hemp waste which reduced the cost of paper
production, which prior to this, and later, in the West,
depended solely on rags.
Paper, being made from wood or rags, could be
produced anywhere, and once large scale production
techniques had been developed it could be
manufactured in almost any quantity at moderate cost.
In medieval Europe, the hitherto handcraft of paper
making was mechanized by the use of waterpower, the
first water paper mill in the Iberian Peninsula having
been built in the Portuguese city of Leiria in 1411, and
other processes. The rapid expansion of European paper
production was truly enhanced by the invention of the
printing press and the beginning of the Printing
Revolution in the 15th century.
The art of paper making was known in China long
before the Christian era. It is likely that the art of paper
making was transmitted from china across India to
Persia and Arabia. It is known that the Saracens carried
the practiced of the art to Spain after their conquest of
that country in the 8th century. There was gradually
developed, but spread very slowly through Europe.
From Spain it went to Italy where a paper mill in France
was established in 11 89; in Germany in 1390; and the
date of 1330 is given as the time of the first paper mill in
England.
Utilization
There are two classes of paper in common use, as
follows:
First, papers for recording or printing
Second, papers for mechanical purposes.
In the first group are found the fine linen ledgers
and writing papers, printing paper for books, magazines
and general printing purposes and news print used for
news paper. General printing papers require a white
paper with filling and sizing material. Some grades of
printing papers are given a smooth surface by special
calendaring instead of by loading with clay and sizing.
In the second group are the cardboards,
pasteboards, paper-match, wrapping papers, and
blotting and tissue papers and those of the heaviest
forms, such as building paper, carpet and wall paper,
etc. This paper is free from sizing of any kind and so is
capable of absorbing water or other liquids. It can be
dyed to any desired color without impairing its quality.
Tissue papers are the thinnest of all papers and are
generally made from rags or paper shavings, with
varying quantities of wood pulp.
Many different kind of paper are currently
manufactured, catering to a wide variety of needs.
People use paper to write notes, letters memos, and
diaries; to print pictures; to perform office work; and to
publish newspapers, magazines, books and journals. For
these purposes, paper is available in such forms as note
paper, office paper, newsprint, and photographic paper.
Most magazines use coated paper, which has smooth,
shiny surface suitable for printing pictures without
dispersion of the ink.
Paper is used extensively in the fine arts, as the
substrate for paintings and drawings and to make
reproduction and prints. In addition, various crafts-such
as the making of origami shapes and papier - Mache
objects-involve the use of paper. A number of paper
products serve a variety of cleaning needs. Examples
include paper towels, paper napkins, facial tissue, and
toilet tissue. Paper is also used as packaging and
carrying material, such as for envelopes, paper bags, gift
wrap, cardboard boxes, and some types of food wrap.
Special packaging is used to protect items such as china,
clothing, and perishable foods. Some paper products,
such as paper cups and plates, are used mainly because
of the convenience of portability and disposal.
Some plants other than trees are suitable for paper-
making. In areas without significant forests, bamboo has
been used for paper pulp, as has straw and sugarcane.
Flax

Hemp, and jute fibers are commonly used for


textiles and rope making, but they can also be used for
paper. Some high-grade cigarette paper is made from
flax.
• Cotton and linen rags are used in fine-grade papers
such as letterhead and resume paper, and for bank
notes and security certificates. The rags are usually
cuttings and waste from textile and garment mills.
The rags must be cut and cleaned, boiled, and
beaten before they can be used by the paper mill.
• Other materials used in paper manufacture include
bleaches and dyes, fillers such as chalk, clay,
or titanium oxide, and sizing's such as rosin, gum,
and starch.

Methods of making the paper

The method of making paper is essentially a simple


one—mix up vegetable fibers, and cook them in hot
water until the fibers are soft but not dissolved. The hot
water also contains a base chemical such as lye, which
softens the fibers as they are cooking. Then, pass a
screen-like material through the mixture, let the water
drip off and/or evaporate, and then squeeze or blot out
additional water. A layer of paper is left behind.
The principal requirements which paper manufacturers
hold as desirable in woods for making paper pulp are
summarized as follows:
1. The wood should contain a long, strong and yet soft
and tender fiber. Woods in which these characters
stand out make the best paper and are used with
comparative economy.
2. The wood should be relatively free from
intercellular constituents, such as resins, gums,
tennins, etc. Highly resinous woods and those
containing large percentages of tannins, gums, etc.
are converted into paper with considerable
difficulty and are used only for the cheaper grades
of paper.

The wood must be available in sufficient quantities,


reasonably accessible and, therefore, fairly economical
in price. Some woods are admirably adapted to the
manufacture of pulp and paper, but are often
eliminated because they are not sufficiently available or
are in greater demand for other purposes.
4. White fibered woods are preferred since most papers
are white or light in color. Bleaching at great expense is
required to whiten some woods. Woods which are white
or nearly so are much more in demand than those of
deep or dark colors.
5. The wood must be sound, reasonably clear of knots,
free from rot, dote, bark, pitch pockets, and other
defects. Sound wood, clear of all foreign matter or
defects is especially required in certain process of pulp
manufacture.
6. The wood itself should contain large quantities of
available cellulose. Most woods contain between 40%
and 60% of cellulose. Since the basis of all paper is
cellulose, it is desirable to select a wood for pulp that
contains cellulose in a form that is readily separated
without loss by the destructive action of chemicals
which are used in cooking processes.
Wood pulp

Description
Wood pulp is wood that has been cut up into small
pieces and crushed. Wood pulp is used to make paper.
Pulp is a lignocellulosic fibrous material
prepared by chemically or mechanically
separating cellulose fibres from wood, fiber crops, waste
paper, or rags. Many kinds of paper are made from
wood with nothing else mixed into them. This includes
newspaper, magazines and even toilet paper. Pulp is
one of the most abundant raw materials worldwide.
Where the product was produced
Papermaking using pulp made from hemp and
linen fibers from tattered clothing, fishing nets and
fabric bags spread to Europe in the 13th century, with
an ever-increasing use of rags being central to the
manufacture and affordability of rag paper, a factor in
the development of printing. By the 1800s, demand
often exceeding the available supply of rags, and also
the manual labor of papermaking resulted in paper
being still a relatively pricey product.
Using wood pulp to make paper is a fairly recent
innovation that was almost concurrent to the invention
of automatic papermaking machines, both together
resulting in paper and cardboard becoming an
inexpensive commodity in modern times. Although the
first use of paper made from wood pulp dates from
1800, as seen in some pages of a book published by
Matthias Koop's that year
in London, large-scale wood paper production began
with the development of mechanical pulping in
Germany by Friedrich Gottlob Keller in the 1840s, and by
the Canadian inventor Charles Fenerty in Nova Scotia,
Chemical processes quickly followed, first with J. Roth's
use of sulfurous acid to treat wood, then by Benjamin
Tilghman's U.S. patent on the use of calcium bisulfite,
Ca(HSO3)2, to pulp wood in 1867. Almost a decade later,
the first commercial sulfite pulp mill was built, in
Sweden. It used magnesium as the counter ion and was
based on work by Carl Daniel Ekman. By 1900, sulfite
pulping had become the dominant means of producing
wood pulp, surpassing mechanical pulping methods. The
competing chemical pulping process, the sulfate,
or Kraft, process was developed by Carl F. Dahl in 1879;
the first Kraft mill started, in Sweden, in 1890. The
invention of the recovery boiler, by G.H. Tomlinson in
the early 1930s, allowed Kraft mills to recycle almost all
of their pulping chemicals. This, along with the ability of
the Kraft process to accept a wider variety of types of
wood and to produce stronger fibres, made the Kraft
process the dominant pulping process, starting in the
1940s.
Global production of wood pulp in 2006 was
175 million tons (160 million tonnes). In the previous
year, 63 million tons (57 million tonnes) of market pulp
(not made into paper in the same facility) was sold, with
Canada being the largest source at 21 percent of the
total, followed by the United States at 16 percent.
The wood fiber sources required for pulping are "45%
sawmill residue, 21% logs and chips, and 34% recycled
paper" (Canada, 2014). Chemical pulp made up 93
percent of market pulp.
Utilization
Wood pulp is the most common material used to
make paper.
The timber resources used to make wood pulp are
referred to as pulpwood. Wood pulp comes
from softwood trees such
as spruce, pine, fir, larch and hemlock,
and hardwoods such as eucalyptus, aspen and birch.
A pulp mill is a manufacturing facility that converts
wood chips or other plant fibre source into a thick
fiberboard which can be shipped for paper mill for
further processing. Wood and other plant materials
used to make pulp contain three main components
(apart from water): cellulose fibers (desired for
papermaking), lignin (a three-dimensional polymer that
binds the cellulose fibres together) and hemicelluloses,
(shorter branched carbohydrate polymers).

Methods in making the product


The Manufacturing
Process
Making pulp
1. Several processes are commonly used to convert logs
to wood pulp. In the mechanical process, logs are first
tumbled in drums to remove the bark. The logs are then
sent to grinders, which break the wood down into pulp
by pressing it between huge revolving slabs. The pulp is
filtered to remove foreign objects. In the chemical
process, wood chips from de-barked logs are cooked in a
chemical solution. This is done in huge vats called
digesters. The chips are fed into the digester, and then
boiled at high pressure in a solution of
sodium hydroxide and sodium sulfide. The chips dissolve
into pulp in the solution. Next the pulp is sent through
filters. Bleach may be added at this stage, or colorings.
The pulp is sent to the paper plant.
Beating
2.The pulp is next put through a pounding and
squeezing process called, appropriately enough,
beating. Inside a large tub, the pulp is subjected to
the effect of machine beaters. At this point, various
filler materials can be added such as chalks, clays,
or chemicals such as titanium oxide. These
additives will influence the opacity and other
qualities of the final product. Sizings are also added
at this point. Sizing affects the way the paper will
react with various inks. Without any sizing at all, a
paper will be too absorbent for most uses except as
a desk blotter. A sizing such as starch makes the
paper resistant to water-based ink (inks actually sit
on top of a sheet of paper, rather than sinking in). A
variety of sizing, generally rosins and gums, is
available depending on the eventual use of the
paper. Paper that will receive a printed design, such
as gift wrapping, requires a particular formula of
sizing that will make the paper accept the printing
properly.

Pulp to paper
3. In order to finally turn the pulp into paper, the
pulp is fed or pumped into giant, automated
machines. One common type is called the
Fourdrinier machine, which was invented in
England in 1807. Pulp is fed into the Fourdrinier
machine on a moving belt of fine mesh screening.
The pulp is squeezed through a series of rollers,
while suction devices below the belt drain off
water. If the paper is to receive a water-mark, a
device called a dandy moves across the sheet of
pulp and presses a design into it.
The paper then moves onto the press section of
the machine, where it is pressed between rollers of
wool felt. The paper then passes over a series of
steam-heated cylinders to remove the remaining
water. A large machine may have from 40 to 70
drying cylinders.

The aim of pulping is to break down the


bulk structure of the fibre source, be it chips, stems
or other plant parts, into the constituent fibres.
Chemical pulping achieves this by degrading the
lignin and hemicellulose into small, water-soluble
molecules which can be washed away from the
cellulose fibres without depolymerizing the
cellulose fibres (chemically depolymerizing the
cellulose weakens the fibres). The various
mechanical pulping methods, such as ground wood
(GW) and refiner mechanical (RMP) pulping,
physically tear the cellulose fibres one from
another. Much of the lignin remains adhering to
the fibres. Strength is impaired because the fibres
may be cut. There are a number of related hybrid
pulping methods that use a combination of
chemical and thermal treatment to begin an
abbreviated chemical pulping process, followed
immediately by a mechanical treatment to separate
the fibres. These hybrid methods include thermo
mechanical pulping, also known as TMP, and
chemithermomechanical pulping, also known as
CTMP. The chemical and thermal treatments
reduce the amount of energy subsequently
required by the mechanical treatment, and also
reduce the amount of strength loss suffered by the
fibres.

Chemical pulping
Main articles: Kraft process, sulfite process,
and soda pulping
To make pulp from wood, a chemical pulping
process separates lignin from cellulose fibres. This
is accomplished by dissolving lignin in a cooking
liquor, so that it may be washed from the cellulose;
this preserves the length of the cellulose fibres.
Paper made from chemical pulps are also known
as wood-free papers–not to be confused with tree-
free paper; this is because they do not contain
lignin, which deteriorates over time. The pulp can
also be bleached to produce white paper, but this
consumes 5% of the fibres; chemical pulping
processes are not used to make paper made from
cotton, which is already 90% cellulose.

The microscopic structure of paper: Micrograph of paper auto


fluorescing under ultraviolet illumination. The individual fibres in this sample are around 10 µmin
diameter.

There are three main chemical pulping processes:


the sulfite process dates back to the 1840s and it was
the dominant method extent before the second world
war. The Kraft process, invented in the 1870s and first
used in the 1890s, is now the most commonly practiced
strategy, one of its advantages is the chemical reaction
with lignin that produces heat, which can be used to run
a generator. Most pulping operations using the Kraft
process are net contributors to the electricity grid or use
the electricity to run an adjacent paper mill. Another
advantage is that this process recovers and reuses all
inorganic chemical reagents. Soda pulping is another
specialty process used to
pulp straws, bagasse and hardwoods with
high silicate content

Mechanical pulping
There are two major mechanical pulps: thermo
mechanical pulp (TMP) and ground wood pulp (GW). In
the TMP process, wood is chipped and then fed into
steam heated refiners, where the chips are squeezed
and converted to fibres between two steel discs. In the
ground wood process, debarked logs are fed into
grinders where they are pressed against rotating stones
to be made into fibres. Mechanical pulping does not
remove the lignin, so the yield is very high, >95%,
however it causes the paper thus produced to turn
yellow and become brittle over time. Mechanical pulps
have rather short fibres, thus producing weak paper.
Although large amounts of electrical energy are required
to produce mechanical pulp, it costs less than the
chemical kind.
De-Inked pulp
Paper recycling processes can use either chemically
or mechanically produced pulp; by mixing it with water
and applying mechanical action the hydrogen bonds in
the paper can be broken and fibres separated again.
Most recycled paper contains a proportion of virgin fibre
for the sake of quality; generally speaking, de-inked pulp
is of the same quality or lower than the collected paper
it was made from.

There are three main classifications of recycled fibre:.


• Mill broke or internal mill waste – This incorporates
any substandard or grade-change paper made
within the paper mill itself, which then goes back
into the manufacturing system to be re-pulped
back into paper. Such out-of-specification paper is
not sold and is therefore often not classified as
genuine reclaimed recycled fibre, however most
paper mills have been reusing their own waste
fibre for many years, long before recycling became
popular.
• Preconsumer waste – This is off cut and processing
waste, such as guillotine trims and envelope blank
waste; it is generated outside the paper mill and
could potentially go to landfill, and is a genuine
recycled fibre source; it includes de-inked
preconsumer (recycled material that has been
printed but did not reach its intended end use, such
as waste from printers and unsold publications).
• Postconsumer waste – This is fibre from paper that
has been used for its intended end use and includes
office waste, magazine papers and newsprint. As
the vast majority of this material has been
printed – either digitally or by more conventional
means such as lithography or rotogravure – it will
either be recycled as printed paper or go through a
de-inking process first.
• Recycled papers can be made from 100% recycled
materials or blended with virgin pulp, although
they are (generally) not as strong nor as bright as
papers made from the latter.

The pulp production process can be divided roughly into


three stages: wood handling, fibre processing, and
drying and baling.
1. Wood handling
Wood is first debarked and cut into small chips for more
efficient pulping. The bark of the trees is used for
bioenergy production at the mill.
2. Fibre processing
While the raw material affects significantly the
properties of the end-product, the process for both
hardwood and softwood is nearly identical, the only
difference being the structure of the wood. Softwood
consists mostly of cellulose and lignin, and it contains
less hemicellulose than hardwood. Softwood fibres are
longer than hardwood fibres and thus softwood pulp is
called long fibre pulp, whereas hardwood pulp is short
fibre pulp. Softwood's long fibres contribute to strength
of the material it is used for.

Cooking the wood chips in the presence of sodium


hydroxide and sulfide liquor under high pressure
removes the lignin and separates the wood into
cellulose fibres. During the cooking process,
approximately half of the wood dissolves.

The pulp is then washed, screened for quality and


bleached.

The spent cooking chemicals and dissolved wood


material is called black liquor. This substance is
recovered and burned in a recovery boiler to produce
energy that keeps the process running. It is renewable,
wood-based, pure energy - perfect for replacing fossil
fuels. In caustic sing, even the cooking chemicals are
processed for re-use.
3. Drying and baling
The pulp is then dried for easier handling and
transportation, cut into sheets and baled. Now the pulp
is ready to travel the world

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