Recycling has become a big part of our everyday lives and in this article, we’re going to have a look at the way in which old cardboard containers are recycled and then processed into paper.
This type of paper is used to manufacture cardboard boxes and other products such as plaster board which is used to construct walls and ceilings.
Today we are looking at how they recycle cardboard into paper that could be used to make these cardboard and plaster board products.
Cardboard is made by sandwiching a corrugated sheet of paper between inner and outer paper liners.
Ceiling board has a center of gypsum and outer linings of papers. The recycling of materials has become very important for maintaining a green world.
The used paper products are delivered to the paper recycling plant by refuse trucks, and skip loaders. The bails of raw materials are drops into a machine known as a Mac Pulper or pop, here the materials are mixed with water. The cardboard is broken down into a paste and foreign materials such as plastics and metals are removed.
The material moves through several stages where it is dried while being pressed and worked to get it to the right consistency. This material which is known as the noodle in the industry is stored ready to be fed to the paper making machines when required.
As the noodle moves to the paper making machine it is again mixed with water and is pressed and stirred to achieve the correct consistency.
Chemicals are also added that will give the paper a certain amount of water resistance for use on the inside of a fruit box for example or fire retarding characteristics to prevent it from burning in the case of plaster board. The mix is almost 90% water as it moves into the machine. Here is pumped through a series of pipes known as the optimist and fed into a head box.
Inside the head box the paper paste is sprayed onto a rotating drum flip the drum is covered with a very fine mesh. Vacuum pumps create a vacuum in the canter of the former drum to suck the liquid paper onto the outside of the drum the vacuum also sucks water out of the mixture. The material is only in contact with the drum for a quarter of a turn as it reaches the top of the drum the vacuum is released, and the paper sheet is picked up by a moving felt.
It’s compressed between suction press rollers to remove water and to form or consolidate the sheet.
There are five of that formers each deposits a thin layer onto the sheet the paper thickness is determined by the thickness of the sheet from each drum, for example if a 125g sheet is required each drum will supply a layer that is 25 grams thick. This machine can produce paper that is between 112g and 230g in weight. Maximum paper width is two and a half meters wide.
The paper passes through five drying sections it is dried as it passes over several hot cylinders that are heated internally with steam. The paper spends about a minute in the drain where it is dried to very accurate moisture content levels. Scanner sensors measure the moisture content of the paper sheet and if it is too wet blasts of steam will be applied to the sheet.
The large paper rolls are moved to the storage warehouses and then loaded onto flatbed trailers by very interesting and efficient roll clapping trucks before being sent out to the converted factories.
In closing, it’s important to recycle and to renew our resources so that we may leave the countryside clean and the manufacturing industry in good condition for our children when they take over.