A Study on Applicability of Wood Flour Spacers Made from Woody Waste

Abstract

Recently, the importance of wastepaper recycling has been emphasized and accordingly, several studies have been conducted to improve the quality of the Korean old corrugated container. A representative example is the application of wood flour-based organic fillers as the spacer. Therefore, if domestic woody waste, which is most commonly used as power plant fuels, can be applied to produce organic fillers, it is expected to become a new economic resource. In this study, we evaluated whether it is possible to manufacture wood flour from woody waste and use it as a spacer for papermaking. This study confirmed that if the wood flour made from woody waste is applied as the spacer for papermaking, the drying load can be reduced by the hydrophobic properties of lignin and securing bulk. In addition, from the analysis of the behavior of wood flour in the paper structure, the shape of the wood flour was found to bend after compression. Moreover, the wood flour was shown to adhere more flatly to the fibers or was located in-between, which minimized the interferences between fibers and stably increased the volume and the strength loss simultaneously. Based on the IR spectral analysis of the handsheets with wood powder being applied, it was confirmed that the intensity of the peaks weakened for the hydroxyl groups, such as OH bending and OH in-plane bending. Therefore, it can be concluded that the application of wood flour manufactured from unused forest resources can effectively increase the associated drying efficiency without chemical heterogeneity.