Recycling of colored office paper. Part II: Post-bleaching with formamidine sulfinic acid and hydrogen peroxide

Abstract

In this study, the optimization of formamidine sulfinic acid (FAS) and hydrogen peroxide (P) bleaching stages of pre-bleached blue, red, yellow, green, and mixed colored office papers was investigated. The FAS was performed as a strong color stripping reagent on blue and green colored samples. However, due to reduced amine compounds FAS was not found to be effective on the red colored samples. In contrast, effective results were obtained with hydrogen peroxide on the red and yellow colored samples. These results showed that the two reagents must be used together in a sequence. Therefore, in this study, FASP and PFAS bleaching sequences were also investigated and the optical properties (absorbance (k/s) spectra, CIE L*a*b* color values, and ISO brightness) of these sequences were compared. The color differences (CIE ΔE) of FASP and PFAS bleaching sequences of the mixed colored samples were calculated as 18.2% and 16.1%, respectively. The FASP bleaching sequence was determined to be more effective than the PFAS sequence for the bleaching of all samples. As a result, this study showed that FAS, a strong reducing agent, and hydrogen peroxide, an effective oxidative decolorizer, can be used together to obtain white writing papers from waste direct dye colored office papers.