APPLICATION OF CHITOSAN-BASED PRODUCTS TO INCREASE HYDROPHOBIC PROPERTIES OF CRAFT PA-PER

Abstract

We devoted our research to study and substantiate the possibility of using products based on commercial chitosan. As an animal polysaccharide, it was applied as an additive in manufacturing laboratory samples of kraft packaging paper with increased hydrophobic properties.
 The research aimed to optimize conditions to produce packaging kraft paper by means of mathematical planning method of the experiment in accordance with the three factor uniform-rotatable second-order model by Box and Hunter.
 It is shown that that the effective hydrophobization of a fairly thin cellulose fibrous material, weight of 1 m2 70 g, is possible. In the studied factor space, we have established mathematical dependences that fit well the influence of the main technological parameters – the consumption of chitosan (0.5–1.5%), the beating degree of paper pulp (25–35 °SR) and softwood content in fiber furnish (80–100%) on the hydrophobicity (increasing moisture resistance) of paper and its physical and mechanical properties.
 It is shown that the presence of chitosan in fiber furnish leads to the hydrophobicity of kraft paper in terms of surface water absorption during one-sided wetting (Cobb test) increases many times and reaches 24–25 g/m2 at the maximum product consumption (1.5%). At the same time, the values of beating degree of paper pulp and softwood content in fiber furnish can vary in a fairly wide technological range, in accordance with the studied factor spaces.
 Increasing the consumption of chitosan, the beating degree of pulp fibers and softwood content in fiber furnish simultaneously provides an increase in the values of almost all physical and mechanical properties of laboratory kraft packaging paper.