Producing Paper Using Pineapple Leaf Fiber

Abstract

Experiments using pineapple leaf fiber as raw material in paper production have been conducted to assess the advantages in terms of mechanical properties, especially tensile strength, tearing strength and thickness of the paper. In this paper, samples of pineapple leaf fiber is mixed with a recycle newspapers in different composition of which is, 25%, 35%, 45%, 55%, 65% and 75% pineapple leaf fibers mixed with 75%, 65%, 55% , 45%, 35% and 25% of the recycle newspapers. The mixtures have been tested for mechanical properties and thickness by using the Universal Testing Machine (UTM) and micrometers. The results from tensile and tearing tests were then compared with data obtained from previous experiments. Through the observation of the experiment, it was found that the data obtained with similar experiments conducted previously. The results have been proved in tears testing and stress testing. Tearing test data shows that the longer the beating time imposed on the mixture, the lower the tearing force required to tear the paper samples. On the other hand, the tensile test results shows, the longer time beating the bear on the mix, the higher the tensile force should be imposed on the sample. The experimental results can help in the formulation of the pineapple leaf fiber-based paper production in accordance to the usage.