Manufacture of toilet paper from straw. Business idea: Wheat straw office paper. For lack of a stamp, we write in simple

The main material for paper production is wood. For this, coniferous trees are used. 10% of commercial wood production is spent on paper needs. The development of computer technology and the Internet reduces the need for it. But the need for such material is gradually increasing. The developed clearings will be renewed in 50 years. When cutting down the border of the forest moves further and further away from transport routes.

The destruction of the forest will cause irreparable harm to mankind. There is an alternative production method. For this, ordinary straw is used. After the harvest of wheat, a lot of it remains in the fields.

Material consumption:

• it takes one and a half tons of straw to produce one ton of paper;
• for the manufacture of cardboard - two tons.

Sometimes a small amount of recycled paper is added during the manufacturing process. Nowadays, Woody Harrelson actively promotes the type of paper based on wheat straw.

Story

Actor Woody Harrelson founded a company that makes paper from wheat straw. He promotes the production and use of this environmentally friendly and high-quality type of wheat straw paper. Woody Harrelson believes that the use of paper production from straw helps to protect nature more effectively.

Woody Harrelson with a book on making paper from straw

Production

Reed technology is a complex process. First, straw is poured into the box. Straw should not be used immediately, long stems will damage the processing.

First stage

First you need to grind the material. A special device is used, which is a rotating drum. Straw is fed into the pipe, where it is sucked. After processing, the straw becomes suitable for further processing. 1300 kilograms will be processed into 1 ton of paper. Loading occurs approximately every 15 or 20 minutes. The chopped straw will need to be transferred to the brewhouse, where further steps in the process will be carried out.

Cooking processing

The crushed material is transferred to vats, which contain alkali - caustic soda.

1. To prepare high-quality paper, it is necessary to soak the straw well with the indicated solution. This is done by digestion in it. An important role is played by the ability to easily absorb and release moisture. This eliminates the use of powerful presses and intensive cooking process.
2. The processed material is drained through the holes that are prepared next to the end of the cooking hose. Straw at this stage is saturated with moisture and alkali to the degree of 20 - 25 percent.
3. It is fed into the next cooking chamber. In this case, the processing takes place with the help of hot steam at a temperature of one hundred degrees.

The operator monitors the filling of the tank. For this purpose, there are holes in the tank shell, and various sensors are installed here, which allow the operator to quickly respond to the degree of loading of the cooking chamber. At the bottom there is a special discharge hose. Through it, the finished mass is unloaded from the tank.

flushing

The mass of treated straw enters the pulper.

1. It is saturated with liquid to a concentration of three percent. In this chamber, the material is washed and prepared for further processing stages.
2. The washed and diluted solution is pumped into the buffer tank, which is considered as an intermediate tank. It is equipped in a special way in order to ensure constant mixing and prevent possible compaction of the upper layer of the solution.

To do this, there is an elevation in the center of the pool, and mixing is carried out directly with the help of special fans.

The last stage of preparation

The next step is to grind the material.

1. The device to which the mixture is fed is the primary grinding mill. The material is further defibrated and crushed.
2. At this stage, pre-treatment ends and, after drying, it is sent directly to the paper shop. There it is mixed with a small amount of waste paper and is directly used in the papermaking process.

paper making

After the final grinding and dilution with water, the solution is sent to the table of the paper machine, where there are vibrating grids. There, with the help of vacuum boxes, excess moisture is sucked out and the still wet sheets are cut to the desired size. The presses bring the mixture to a fifty percent state, after which the dryers produce the final drying of the paper. The moisture content of sheets of paper does not exceed ten percent.

Conclusion

Stocks of straw are huge. Paper and cardboard made in this way are of high quality and environmentally friendly. It is possible to produce them not only from straw, but also on the basis of similar materials:

• cane;
• reeds;
• cattail.

Making paper from wood is a relatively recent invention. For example, in North America, paper was made almost exclusively from recycled linen and rags before 1850.

And for example, banknotes, dollars, were made from linen (25 percent) and cotton (75 percent). It turns out paper - rough and velvety, elastic and durable, neutral in color, interspersed with the smallest synthetic fibers (red and blue hairs). Rumor has it that hemp fibers are also used to produce this paper - that's why the dollar is so elastic and wrinkle-resistant. However, official .

A powerful turn of laws during the industrialization era introduced tax breaks and favorable freight rates in the late 1800s—it was the kind of development that firmly established wood as the primary material for paper. These incentives remain relevant to this day and are a big part of our reliance on endangered forests for our paper needs.

During World War II and up until 1960, there were 25 mills in the US that were still making paper from wheat straw.

More than 20% of paper produced in India and China is made from wheat and rice straw and cane bagasse. (the stalks of sugar cane residue are crushed to extract their juice, and then the fibers are used).

In the world, 8% of all paper products are produced from agricultural waste.

Every year, millions of tons of agricultural residues of wheat and flax straw remain unused, while paper production continues to ramp up. According to various estimates, this leads to the cutting down of about 830 million trees every year in the USA alone.

6 Interesting and Astounding Facts About Paper Making

What is paper made from?

One of these companies was Nature's Paper, which began to use wheat straw for the production of office paper, which remains after the grain harvest. Usually this straw is fed to livestock or left in the fields without using anything other than fertilizer.

Nature's Paper collects straw and processes it into paper pulp. But not only the end product is provided by straw, but water for production is also heated with organic fuel made from straw.

Office paper made from this material has a yellowish color, because sodium salts and chlorine are used to bleach it. The quality of bleached paper is absolutely no different from wood. If you think about it, how much waste paper is constantly thrown away with food

The company sets an example of an extremely careful attitude to nature and maximalism in the use of agricultural products. This idea is for reflection and development of similar thoughts in the minds of future entrepreneurs and inventors.

Another company, New Leaf Paper, makes paper from banana and palm fibers. All paper produced at this enterprise has nothing to do with trees. It is ordered for printing. books.

Ecopaper makes paper from anything but wood. Paper from plantations of bananas, mangoes, coffee. It is made from the leaves and stems of these plants remaining after harvest. Previously, they were simply thrown away, but now they make excellent paper. Chlorine is not used in the production of such paper. It also mastered the production of paper from hemp. Sugarcane pomace paper, perfectly white, suitable for use in office equipment.

Poopoopaper has mastered the technology of paper production from… elephant dung!

The manure is first dried, then boiled, thoroughly washed and used to make paper. No, the paper does not smell of anything and looks no different from ordinary paper!
Production is put on stream, paper is sold in 16 countries of the world.
taken

Office paper it can be made from wood or be the result of recycling already used paper, but when it comes to the production of large quantities, wood is still used to make it.

In an effort to save tens of millions of trees from this fate, the company "Nature"s Paper» offers an alternative that uses leftover wheat straw.

When wheat is harvested, as a rule, only grain is used, which becomes the raw material for products such as flour and cereals. The remains of the mow, namely wheat straw, are usually left to decompose in the fields or fed to livestock.

Company "Nature's Paper" collects straw residues and converts them into paper pulp. At the same time, straw is also being used to produce organic biofuel, which helps the company heat water in production.

The bleaching process uses chlorine and sodium salts. Now the company produces office paper in A4 and A3 formats. Its quality is no different from paper made from wood.

This is an ideal business for district and regional scales.

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Comments (8)

A. SHMAKOVA
Rice. L. TEPLOV

With the first spring flood and until the end of navigation, hundreds of thousands and millions of trees, cut down in forests and tied into rafts, float along large and small rivers. A considerable part of them is sent to paper mills and pulp and paper mills. The so-called balance is delivered here by rivers and railways - straight, without knots, slender spruces of a certain thickness and length.

Currently, the raw material for the pulp and paper industry is mainly coniferous wood. 10% of commercial timber harvested by the USSR Ministry of Forest Industry is processed into pulp, paper and cardboard.

Every year more and more paper is produced. And yet we miss her. Who hasn't had to feel annoyed when the kiosk did not have a quickly sold out favorite magazine? How nice it would be to always get bread wrapped in thin paper at the bakery!

The demand for paper is growing faster than spruce trees grow in the forests. Our country is very rich in forests: we have one third of all the world's green areas. But even now in the European part of the Soviet Union, where paper mills and pulp and paper mills are mainly concentrated, the annual consumption of wood exceeds the natural increase in forest. And in the vast expanses of the south of the USSR there are no forests at all or almost none. Wood has to be brought here from afar. Long journeys by railroads are made by paper produced mainly in forested areas.

But on the same southern treeless expanses there are huge, annually reproduced reserves of raw materials suitable for the production of paper and cardboard.

Indeed, is it really necessary to spend only wood, which is so necessary for construction and other national economic needs, for the production of paper? In addition, cutting areas with timber reserves are gradually moving farther and farther from railways and waterways, which leads to a rise in the cost of products. And cut down cutting areas are renewed only after 50-100 years.

It has long been known that in China, which is not rich in forests, paper has been made from rice straw, bamboo, reeds, and shrubs for many centuries. Today, for example, in France, not only coniferous wood, but also annual plants are used as raw materials for paper and cardboard.

The history of the Russian paper industry also knows examples of the use of such raw materials. In one of the chronological indexes of the most important Russian inventions and improvements in paper production, we find that as early as 1714, straw was used as a raw material at the Bogoroditsky paper mill and at the Krasnoselskaya paper mill. It is also known that in 1861 at the St. Petersburg Industrial Exhibition samples of white paper and cardboard made from straw were presented. In 1870, the Nevsky factory organized a straw-pulp mill, and two years later, the Malinsky paper factory made paper from sedge. In those same years, the Odessa and Kherson factories successfully produced paper from reeds growing here in abundance. In the book depositories of old libraries, one can find No. 107 of the Odessa Journal for 1872, printed on reed paper.

The reserves of non-timber raw materials in the Soviet Union are incalculable. The area occupied by various reeds in our country is about 5 million hectares. Only in the south of Ukraine in the floodplains of the Dnieper, the Southern Bug, the Dniester and the Danube, the annual resources of reed, cattail and reeds amount to more than 400 thousand tons, of which only 50-60 thousand tons are used for various economic purposes. Even greater resources of these plants in the Volga delta, where they reach 2 million tons, and in Kazakhstan -14 million tons.

It's time to put these resources at the service of the pulp and paper industry. They will make it possible to obtain additional hundreds of thousands of tons of printed paper and cardboard.

Two tons of cane can be used to make a ton of cardboard. Consequently, only hundreds of thousands of tons of cardboard can be produced annually from the reed beds of the Astrakhan region and Kazakhstan.

Cardboard is a valuable material. It is widely used in industry, construction, and at home. There are about 100 types of cardboard. In many cases, it successfully replaces and even surpasses wooden packaging in its qualities. In economic terms, this is not a trifle at all. Suffice it to say that in 1955 we produced about 650 million wooden boxes for packaging, for which approximately 16 million cubic meters were used. m of business forest. Even the processing of this wood into cardboard would have yielded significantly more packaging materials. After all, only about 40 packing boxes are made from one cubic meter of wood. And if this wood is turned into cardboard, then 200 boxes of the same capacity will be obtained from it, strong enough and lighter. It is all the more profitable to get cardboard containers from reed and straw.

It is time to put an end to the unjustified waste of our forest wealth.

The directives of the XX Congress of the CPSU, which provide for an increase in the production of printing paper by about 60%, newsprint by 51% and cardboard by 2.8 times in the Sixth Five-Year Plan, directly indicate the need to "build new pulp mills and cardboard factories based on the use of reeds."

The paper industry is slowly and timidly realizing new opportunities to increase the output of paper and paperboard.

True, the Ministry of the Paper and Woodworking Industry is planning to build two plants for the production of bleached cane pulp and two cardboard mills in Ukraine: one in the Astrakhan region, the other in Kazakhstan. But this is a drop in the ocean. Apparently, the leaders of the ministry prefer to follow the beaten path of using precious wood, not wanting to bother themselves in search of new ways to process cheaper materials. At the same time, many experts argue that the production of cellulose from cane and straw is technologically simpler, and its quality is no worse than from wood.

The production of paper and cardboard can be developed on a large scale: in virgin regions, from straw; in the southern regions of Ukraine and in the North Caucasus - from straw and reed vegetation; in rice-growing areas - from rice straw; in the middle and central lane - from straw, potato tops, flax and hemp fires, needles, bark and other plant waste.

For this, it is not always necessary to build huge plants, such as Kamsky and Balakhninsky. Small pulp mills and pulp and paper mills will be fully supplied with local raw materials.

Reed, straw - a wide road to pulp and paper and cardboard mills!

TO THE MINISTER OF PAPER AND WOODWORKING INDUSTRY TOV. F. D. VARAKSIN

WE KNOW HOW BIG CHALLENGES WE HAVE TO EXPERIENCE IN OBTAINING VALUABLE WOOD FOR PAPER AND CARDBOARD PRODUCTION. THESE DIFFICULTIES GROW ON THE SCISSORS PRINCIPLE WOOD WILL NOT GIVE ENOUGH, PAPER WILL DEMAND MORE AND MORE. BECAUSE THE FORESTS ARE RETRACTING FROM THE PAPER MILLS that absorb THEM, AND THE DEMAND FOR PAPER IS GROWING. THIS QUESTION WORRIES EVERYONE: PUBLISHING HOUSES, READERS, SCHOOLCHILDREN, YOU PERSONALLY, MANY OF YOUR EMPLOYEES AND EVEN PEOPLE WHO BURN TENS OF MILLION TONS OF STRAW, CANE AND OTHER TYPES OF POTENTIAL PAPER AS A BAD FUEL.

YOU KNOW, OF COURSE, THAT WE HAVE AN OBLIGATION TO RESTORE OUR FOREST RESOURCES, HARDLY DISTURBED IN MANY PLACES BY THE PAPER INDUSTRY. IT IS ALSO KNOWN THAT THE PRODUCTION OF PAPER AND CARDBOARD FROM CANE, STRAW AND EVEN FROM THE HOLMS OF MANY GARDEN PLANTS AND CORN STALKS IS DIFFICULT TO CALL A TECHNICAL NOVELTY. MANY OF SUCH TECHNOLOGICAL PROCESSES WERE KNOWN WITH US UNDER PETER I, AND IN CHINA EVEN EARLIER.

UNDISPUTED, THE PAPER INDUSTRY IS ONLY ONE OF THE RESPONSIBLE FOR FOREST DESTRUCTION, BUT IF FOREST LOCATIONS ARE CUT DOWN EVEN TO SAW FROM WOOD, MAINLY YOUNG, "IRREVECIBLE" TARN PLATE, WHAT IT DOES BECAUSE IT IS

FOR A NUMBER OF YEARS, BOTH THE FOREST WEALTH OF THE COUNTRY AND PAPER PRODUCTION HAD SUFFERED FROM PAPER PRODUCTION. IN THE FLOW OF PAPER, A LOT OF GREAT SOLUTIONS ON THE USE OF CHEAP AND AVAILABLE TYPES OF RAW MATERIALS FOR PAPER PRODUCTION sank. FROM DECISIONS TO ACCOMPLISHMENTS - ONE STEP. BUT IS IT TOO TOO LONG, IN ATHLETES' SPEECH?

PAPER, THE MAIN CARRIER OF HUMAN CULTURE, CANNOT BE SUFFICIENT. THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE IN ANY COUNTRY, AND IN OURS - ESPECIALLY.

READERS ARE LEGITLY DISSATISFIED THAT THE CIRCULATION OF OUR MAGAZINE, AS A SERIES OF OTHER EDITIONS, SATISFIES ONLY 10% OF THE NEEDS. HOW MUCH YEARS WILL THIS BOTTLE PLACE BE? HOW LONG WILL THE TRANSITION TO NEW TYPES OF RAW MATERIALS TAKE AND IS IT PLANNED SPECIFICALLY?

WE WOULD BE VERY GRATEFUL IF YOU AND YOUR EMPLOYEES DON'T FIND IT BAD TO ANSWER THESE READERS' QUESTIONS.

Woody Harrelson is a well-known actor who has appeared in film and television in a variety of roles, from Woody the bartender on Cheers in the 1980s to Hamich Abernathy on last year's The Hunger Games. There were many more milestones along the way, including two Oscar nominations. He is also known as an ardent environmentalist, especially when it comes to the forests of North America. Having left his role as a political activist in the past, he has now gone far beyond the protest format in favor of a project designed to shift society's appetite for paper products from forest areas to a much less sought-after product: agricultural waste.

How relevant is this? Wild forests absorb nearly a fifth of the carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels, according to data from Canopy, a company that promotes forest conservation. When we cut down trees, we are not only reducing the size of one of the most efficient carbon dioxide disposal mechanisms on the planet, but we are also releasing dozens, if not hundreds, of years of storage to freedom. Globally, 71% of the world's paper stock comes from a variety of forests. It is estimated that 63,000 trees are required for one issue of the New York Times Sunday.

RP Siegel spoke with Woody ahead of a press conference to launch and distribute Step Forward in the US by Prairie Pulp & Paper, of which Woody is a co-founder. This paper consists of 80% wheat straw instead of conventional wood pulp and thus has the lowest environmental impact of any on the market. Starting today, Step Forward paper will be sold at Staples. Jeff Golfman, President of Prairie Pulp & Paper, also took part in the conversation.

TriplePundit: What inspired you to take on this project?

Woody Harrelson: I've been worried about forests for a long time. For example, in 1996, I participated in demonstrations on the Golden Gate Bridge against the cutting down of redwood trees in Northern California (Woody was arrested at this demonstration), and even earlier, in 1992, I participated in protests against the transfer of 6 million acres of virgin forests in Montana for logging. It bothered me very much. I got in touch with my friends at Greenpeace and we started working on ways to stop this. But in the process, I realized that even when it turns out to save this or that forest from cutting down, they start cutting down somewhere else, well, like in the game “Kill the Mole” (an arcade game whose task is to hit the moles randomly appearing from mink). Therefore, one should turn to how paper is made. Of the three to six billion trees that are cut down in the world every year, half is used to make paper. Thus, a change in the approach to paper production would greatly change this picture. This is exactly what we have achieved. We now have paper that is 80% wheat straw, and it's better for the environment than any other paper in existence today. And now, for the first time, such paper will be available in the United States, at Staples stores.

TriplePundit: Do you plan to increase production as demand grows?

Woody Harrelson: Yes, we think to build momentum in a natural way. The volume of this industry is huge, the world demand is 400 million tons per year, and this number will double in the next fifteen years. Thus, the load on the forests is simply monstrous. We plan to launch the first wood pulp free paper mill in North America within the next 3-5 years. It will be an eco-factory outside the system, all paper will be 100% non-wood raw materials, completely from agricultural waste - from what is left by farms. The price will be comparable to the price of ordinary paper or even lower. Then the revolution in this area will move to a qualitatively new level.

TriplePundit: What about other paper products like newspapers, napkins, etc.?

Woody Harrelson: We will definitely come to this, but right now we are focusing on office paper.

Jeff Golfman: I'd like to add that the boxes our paper is packaged in are also made from agricultural waste. So, sooner or later, we will start promoting many other types of paper products.

TriplePundit: Where is your paper coming from now?

Woody Harrelson: We make it in India. Jeff was able to find a factory that can produce chlorine-free paper from agricultural raw materials that meets our requirements. We are fine with that until we set up our own production here.

TriplePundit: Building a factory like this will offload your production from abroad, which means it will significantly increase your ecological footprint.

Jeff Golfman: On our website, anyone can find a report on the analysis of the life cycle of all company processes that we ordered. Even with overseas shipments, our GHG and footprint figures are generally lower than those of all other paper manufacturers in North America today. Once we commercialize wood-free paper using renewable energy here in North America, we will set new standards for sustainable paper products.

TriplePundit: So, over time, you will move from 80% non-wood raw materials in paper to 100%?

Woody Harrelson: Yes, we already have a few trial samples of 100% non-wood paper. I remember that I was very struck by the faces of the factory workers. They realized that they were part of a turning point in history. These people have devoted years of their lives to working in their industry. But the sight of rolls of paper coming out of the press, which contains absolutely no wood, should excite anyone.

TriplePundit: So what's holding you back from making the switch to 100% non-wood paper?

Jeff Golfman: It took us about 14 years of research to bring the first sheets of paper to the market, so it will take a few more months to go to 100% and several million dollars in research and development.

TriplePundit: Looking to the future, I imagine that more people will use their smartphones and tablets than print anything. More and more people will be involved in recycling. And already today we are going to produce wood-free paper. What do you think, will we be able to catch the moment when the forests will not be subjected to human influence at all?

Woody Harrelson: Today, the demand for paper just keeps growing, regardless of the internet or anything else. And although people expected that they would get rid of paper in offices, the statistics stubbornly say the opposite.

But, given all the changes taking place in the industry, I look to the future with optimism. As Ramez Naam so aptly pointed out in The Infinite Resource, such projections consistently overlook the impact of innovation. And I believe that the innovation that will be presented today will do just that - it will change the current situation in relation to forests and our way of life.

Prairie Pulp & Paper provided me with samples of Step Forward paper that I tested for print quality on both color and black and white laser printers with excellent results on both. Plus, typing was much more enjoyable because I knew I was saving trees.

About the Author: Mr. Siegel is a professional engineer, inventor, consultant, and author. He co-authored the environmental thriller Vapor Trails, the first in a series of books on the impact of the human factor in various areas of sustainable development, including energy, food and water resources. The book is written in an entertaining and somewhat swashbuckling manner and is being adapted