The Process of Papermaking

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The United States had been the world’s leading producer of paper until it was overtaken by China in 2009. The paper industry is dominated by North American, Northern European and East Asian countries. Paper is discovered by the Chinese 2000 years ago, it has been used ever since as a communication medium. Paper is always around with people and paper is actually documenting the world. It plays a vital role as a passport to knowledge, a storage medium, a persuasive tool and an entertaining art form. Paper is a sustainable resource and permanent document. It is the universal medium on which to chronicle every day history which carries the past. Papermaking today is a large, capital-intensive industry, characterized by high speed machines and complex systems of control for manufacture. Papermaking is produced through several processes. As elaborated by Adanur (1997), there are fiber supply, kraft pulping, mechanical pulping, bleaching, preparation paper making, paper is formed (refer to Figure 1 in Appendix 1).
Firstly, the fiber is harvested from timberland. In general, harvesting during the dormancy yields the most papermaking fiber. The collection of fiber supply originates from three main sources of plant fiber used in papermaking: wood chips, sawdust and old corrugated containers. During this stage, paper industry converts cellulose fiber into pulps. About 95% of fiber is extracted from the wood which is then reduced to fiber by mechanical means, the balance are from waste paper and a small quantity of sawdust and old corrugated containers which are required to process to obtain individual fiber for papermaking (Minnes, 2013).
The second step in papermaking is kraft pulping. The production of chemical pulp is predominated for kr...

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