1. Sorting
Successful recycling
requires clean recovered paper, so you must keep your paper free from
contaminants, such as food, plastic, metal, and other trash, which make paper
difficult to recycle. Contaminated paper which cannot be recycled must be
composted, burned for energy, or landfilled.
2. Storage
Paper mill workers
unload the recovered paper and put it into warehouses, where it is stored until
needed. The various paper grades, such as newspapers and corrugated boxes, are
kept separate, because the paper mill uses different grades of recovered paper
to make different types of recycled paper products. When the paper mill is
ready to use the paper, forklifts move the paper from the warehouse to large
conveyors.
3. Re-pulping and Screening
The paper moves by
conveyor to a big vat called a pulper,
which contains water and chemicals. The pulper
chops the recovered paper into small pieces. Heating the mixture breaks the
paper down more quickly into tiny strands of cellulose (organic plant material)
called fibers. Eventually, the old paper turns into a mushy mixture called
pulp. The pulp is forced through screens containing holes and slots of various
shapes and sizes. The screens remove small contaminants such as bits of plastic
and globs of glue. This process is called screening.
4. Cleaning
Mills also clean
pulp by spinning it around in large cone-shaped cylinders. Heavy contaminants
like staples are thrown to the outside of the cone and fall through the bottom
of the cylinder. Lighter
contaminants collect in the center of the cone and are removed. This process is called cleaning.
5. Deinking
Sometimes
the pulp must undergo a "pulp laundering" operation called deinking
(de-inking) to remove printing ink and "stickies" (sticky materials like glue
residue and adhesives). Papermakers often use a combination of two deinking
processes. Small particles of ink are rinsed from the pulp with water in a
process called washing. Larger particles and stickies are removed with air bubbles in
another process called flotation. During flotation deinking, pulp is fed into a
large vat called a flotation cell, where air and soap-like chemicals call
surfactants are injected into the pulp. The surfactants cause ink and stickies to loosen from the
pulp and stick to the air bubbles as they float to the top of the mixture. The
inky air bubbles create foam or froth which is removed from the top, leaving
the clean pulp behind.
6. Refining, Bleaching, and Color Stripping
During
refining, the pulp is beaten to make the recycled fibers swell, making them
ideal for papermaking. If the pulp contains any large bundles of fibers,
refining separates them into individual fibers. If the recovered paper is
colored, color stripping chemicals remove the dyes from the paper. Then, if
white recycled paper is being made, the pulp may need to be bleached with
hydrogen peroxide, chlorine dioxide, or oxygen to make it whiter and brighter.
If brown recycled paper is being made, such as that used for industrial paper
towels, the pulp does not need to be bleached.
7. Papermaking
Now
the clean pulp is ready to be made into paper. The recycled fiber can be used
alone, or blended with new wood fiber (called virgin fiber) to give it extra
strength or smoothness. The pulp is mixed with water and chemicals to make it
99.5% water. This watery pulp mixture enters the headbox, a giant metal box at the beginning of
the paper machine, and then is sprayed in a continuous wide jet onto a huge
flat wire screen which is moving very quickly through the paper machine.
On the screen, water starts to drain from the pulp, and the recycled fibers quickly begin to bond together to form a watery sheet. The sheet moves rapidly through a series of felt-covered press rollers which squeeze out more water.
The sheet, which now
resembles paper, passes through a series of heated metal rollers which dry the
paper. If coated paper is being made, a coating mixture can be applied near the
end of the process, or in a separate process after the papermaking is completed.
coating gives paper a smooth, glossy surface for printing.
Finally, the
finished paper is wound into a giant roll and removed from the paper machine.
One roll can be as wide as 30 feet and weigh as much as 20 tons! The roll of
paper is cut into smaller rolls, or sometimes into sheets, before being shipped
to a converting plant where it will be printed or made into products such as
envelopes, paper bags, or boxes.
sumber:
http://www.tappi.org/paperu/all_about_paper/earth_answers/earthAnswers.htm