Paper has become so firmly established in our lives that when using it, we do not think about its origin and production. Although every person knows what paper is made from. But the process of turning a tree into thin white leaves is not known to many. So how is paper made?
Paper production is carried out by the paper and pulp industry. The most common is its production from wood. Wood pulp is produced from forest trees. In order to understand how they do it, let’s take a virtual tour of the factory.
Raw materials arrive there in unprocessed form. Here the bark is stripped from the tree and then crushed into chips using special machines. Next there are some papers. The simplest mechanical one. With this method, crushed wood chips are mixed with water and further processed. The result is paper of not very high quality, which is used for publishing newspapers. In order to obtain raw materials of good, high quality, a chemical production method is used. With this method, chips are selected by size and boiled. This process occurs using acid in machines specially designed for this purpose. After cooking, the resulting mass is washed and foreign substances are removed. The resulting raw materials are subjected to further processing to produce a specific
In order to obtain it, glue is added to the raw material. This gives it a water-repellent effect. Resins added during the production process prevent the ink from bleeding and make the writing easy to read. Paper intended for printing does not require such additives because the inks used for it are not water-based.
To make paper white and opaque, the raw materials are colored with special dyes and pigments. After all operations have been completed, the process of producing raw materials begins. The machines move the resulting slurry from one shaft to another, on which a mesh is stretched. In this case, a paper sheet is formed. The water that was in the raw material gradually flows out through the holes in the mesh. The fibers intertwine and form rolls. Next, the canvas undergoes a series of operations, which results in the paper that we are used to having in our everyday life. The rollers through which the raw canvas passes are pressed, dried and polished. After this, it is further pressed and dried. The output is paper rolls, which are used for their intended purpose. They are cut or sent in rolls for further use. In the process of making paper, many special machines are used. All labor is mechanized. But, nevertheless, this is very valuable material. Therefore, knowing what and how paper is made from, you begin to treat it more carefully. After all, 17 trees are needed to produce 1 ton of paper.
Previously, a massive collection of waste paper was organized in the country. After cleaning from ink, it is added to paper raw materials during the production process. Paper is a necessary attribute of modern life. It’s even hard to imagine that its first inventors were the Chinese. For a long time they did not discover the secret of how paper was made.
Paper is used in various areas of our lives. Napkins, notebooks, books, toys, wallpaper, and money are made from it. It is perhaps impossible to list the entire list of where paper is used. In some cases, it is simply irreplaceable and is the only suitable material. New ones are opening up more and more possibilities for its application.
Making paper is a complex physical and chemical process. A simple sheet is the result of many steps in the manufacturing process. Now we will look at the step-by-step process of creating paper.
Paper production consists of the following steps. First, the logs are delivered to the mill. There they are crushed using production equipment and then boiled with special substances. After this, the mixture is filtered, resulting in the formation of paper pulp. It is placed in machines where it is turned into canvas and then into paper. Each stage contains many nuances, so let’s look at them in more detail. Wood is needed to make paper. It also requires a lot of water. Therefore, many paper mills are located on the banks of rivers near forests. In addition, reservoirs can be used for timber rafting. Paper is most often made from spruce, pine and birch, but other plant materials such as straw or cotton are also used. In some cases, waste paper is used, which reduces deforestation. The process of creating paper begins with the fact that logs are delivered to the mill - by river or by land. Manufacturing equipment strips them of their bark and chops them into short logs of equal length. To get paper from them, they crush them even more. Then the resulting mass is boiled for several hours with the addition of special chemicals. As a result of this process, wood is converted into tiny fibers called cellulose. Depending on the quality of paper needed to be obtained, chemically untreated wood pulp, cleared of large particles, or shredded waste paper is added to these fibers. It is worth mentioning here that adding waste paper makes the paper thicker and better quality.
Understanding all the stages of paper creation will help you make the right decision when choosing the appropriate type for printing. This way, you can choose the paper with the best image quality, which will reduce jams and other inconveniences.
But how does a huge tree turn into a beautiful notebook, book or stack of white sheets? Let's figure this out together.
How paper is made
Paper is produced in paper mills. Logs are brought from the forest to the factory. The most commonly used are pine, spruce, birch, as well as eucalyptus, poplar, and chestnut.
On a special platform, the bark is stripped from the logs and crushed into chips. The fragments are then transported on a conveyor belt to a pulp mill, where they are boiled in a special solution. The result is cellulose, the main raw material for paper production.
Interesting! One tree produces 2857 notebooks of 12 pages. It takes 60 years to grow a mature tree. That is why it is important to use textbooks and notebooks carefully, because all of these are cut down trees.
The most economical way to obtain wood pulp is mechanical. The wood processing plant grinds the timber into crumbs and mixes it with water. This is how low-quality paper is made - for example, for newspapers.
But for the production of high-quality paper - for magazines, books and brochures - they use chemical method. Using sieves, the fragments are sorted by size. Next, the chopped wood with the addition of acid is boiled in special machines.
The cellulose then passes through filters and is washed to remove impurities. At this stage, waste paper can be added to the raw material, but it must first be cleared of ink.
The next step is adding adhesives and resins. The first ones repel moisture, the second ones prevent the spreading of ink, which is often water-based. It is thanks to these processes that what is written in your notebook does not smudge and is easy to read. Printing paper does not require such sizing, because printing inks are not water-based.
But that's not all. Then pigments and dyes are added to the paper raw material. For example, the white color of paper is obtained by adding kaolin.
After this, the paper pulp enters the paper machine onto a conveyor belt. Here, with the help of tiny porous holes and pressing with various rollers, moisture is removed from the paper and a continuous roll of tape is formed.
At the “wet pressing” stage, the paper is finally dried, dehydrated and compacted. The result is a smooth white tape wound onto a huge roll. The paper is ready! Can be sent to book factories. There, the paper web is cut to create books and notebooks.
You can learn all the intricacies of paper production from the video.
How are books made?
So, after the author writes the text and the editor of the publishing house approves it, the proofreading process. The work is checked for errors. Ideally, the proofreading team reads the text several times. After this, illustrations are selected for the book.
Then it begins layout. Using a special computer program, the layout designer selects the book format, margin size, types and sizes of fonts, and determines the location of illustrations and text.
The next stage is called color separation. Did you know that to print a fashion magazine cover you only need four colors: blue, pink, yellow and black? Therefore, now the designer must divide all illustrations into four components.
The most important stage is book printing. Using rollers on a printing machine, the ink is rolled out to a thin layer and applied to a printing plate, which rotates and applies the image to a continuous roll of paper.
Interesting! Printing house workers can print several thousand sheets in one shift.
It is difficult to imagine any book without a cover. Therefore, the next stage is creating the “face” of the future book. If the cover is ready, it is placed on the book block and trimmed. If a hard cover is being made, the book is trimmed before the cover is glued on.
That's all - the book is ready to delight the eyes of admiring buyers, all that remains is to pack it. You can see with your own eyes how books are made in the next video.
What were books and paper made of in ancient times?
Once upon a time there were no books in the form in which you see them on store windows or in libraries today. And all because people did not know how to make them. Instead of paper, humanity used cave walls, stones, dishes, tree bark…
Years passed and people came up with the idea of making records on wet clay. However, such books were too heavy, inconvenient and short-lived.
After some time, the heavy clay cloth was replaced calf or goat books skins are light and practical. Since the first such book was created in the ancient city of Pergamum, the “paper” made from animal skin was called parchment.
However, such material was too expensive, because to create one book, it was necessary to slaughter many calves. So people kept looking for cheaper and easier ways to create books. And they succeeded.
Along the rivers of Africa there grows a tall marsh plant - papyrus. People did not immediately realize its amazing properties. At first, the plant was used in the construction of houses. But one day a man was repairing his house. I cut the stem, took out the fibrous center and put it in the sun. Imagine the man’s surprise when he noticed that the fibers had turned into dry narrow ribbons. And when he saw that papyrus also absorbs paint well, he realized: you can write on papyrus! This is how books made from papyrus appeared.
But who and when invented paper as we see it now? Researchers assure: the palm belongs to the Chinese. They came up with the idea of producing paper from young bamboo shoots.
Interesting! ...And before that time, the Chinese wrote on silk or bamboo tablets. The Chinese jealously guarded the mystery of silk production. However, silk was very expensive, which means-inaccessible to the majority of the population, and bamboo- too heavy. Only 30 hieroglyphs were placed on one board. Information has been preserved: in order to transport some works, the Chinese needed a whole cart.
Chinese chronicles report that invented paper in 105 AD. e. Tsai Lun.
“Everyone highly appreciates the work of Tsai Lung: he invented paper, and his glory lives on to this day...”- says the chronicle.
The 4th century was a turning point in the history of paper making. After the technology of its production was improved, paper replaced bamboo planks forever. New experiments have proven that paper can be produced from cheap plant materials: tree bark, reed, bamboo. The Chinese were especially happy about the latter: bamboo is a dime a dozen in their country.
No matter how hard the Chinese tried to keep the secret of paper production, they failed. In 751, during the fight against the Arabs, several Chinese craftsmen were captured. From them Arabs They learned the secret of creating a mysterious product and for five centuries they profitably sold it to Europe.
Oddly enough, but Europeans were the last of the civilized peoples to learn how to make paper - somewhere in the 11th-12th centuries. The Spaniards were the first to borrow paper production technology, then the Italians, Germans, English... It is interesting that for a long time paper was made not only from soaked tree fibers, but also from rags and other rags.
The first industrial paper production machine was invented in France in 1798.
On the territoryand Ukrainian lands Paper production began in the 13th century in Galich. However, documented information about Ukrainian paper “factories” has been preserved since the 16th century. Researchers of the history of the Ukrainian paper industry have found materials about 200 “factories” that operated on the territory of Ukraine from the 16th to the beginning of the 20th century, which indicates the high cultural level of the then population.
Radomysl Castle in Radomysl, ZhitomirShchyna is the first paper mill in Central Ukraine, built in 1612.
Now paper surrounds us everywhere, conquering more and more new areas of application every year. That is why it is so important to remember that it is made from trees - forest resources that are catastrophically decreasing every year on the planet.
Treat books with care, use paper sparingly, recycle waste paper, plant trees - the least that everyone can do to preserve forests. And one inventive boy, in order to preserve forest plantations, even refused to write an essay. =)
WHAT IS THE ARTICLE ABOUT?
What is paper made from?
The basis for paper production is cellulose and water. Cellulose fibers are obtained from plant materials. Most often it is wood, but straw, cotton and waste paper are also used. After obtaining cellulose fibers, they are straightened and bleached, and the entire mass is dried and smoothed. Dyes are also added to produce colored paper. The paper is wound into rolls and cut. Next we will talk in more detail about each stage of paper making.
To obtain cellulose fibers, wood goes a long way. Firstly, only certain types of wood are suitable for this. Most often these are spruce, pine, poplar and birch. Eucalyptus, reed and chestnut are sometimes used.
Factory production
The wood processing process begins with debarking, that is, getting rid of the bark. The logs are loaded into a special drum, which has a rough surface with projections. One batch spins in it for about 20 minutes, after which the bark is burned.
The debarked wood is transferred to a conveyor, along which it falls into special saws, which chop it into approximately equal fragments, called chips. Wood chips can be stored for a long time.
The chip processing process begins with washing. After which it is crushed into dust. It is then subjected to alkaline treatment. This happens in large vats of water and chemicals in which to cook for a long time. This is done to break the bond between cellulose fibers, which are a kind of natural glue. The entire mixture is filtered and washed thoroughly. After which various fillers, impregnations, and dyes are added to it. The substances depend on the type of future paper.
The result is a finished cellulose mixture, which consists of 99% water. The resulting mass is fed into a paper-making machine. First of all, the cellulose mixture falls onto a moving mesh with very small cells that only allow water to pass through. After which the wet paper web falls onto a felt belt, then onto cylindrical presses, as a result of which the amount of water is significantly reduced.
The next stage, after which only a few percent of water remains, is drying. The canvas is driven through heated rotating drums, due to which a large amount of moisture is released and the mass dries.
Time of the final paper production process. It is fed onto heated and polished heavy rollers called calenders. Between them, the paper layer is compressed with great force, as a result of which it becomes completely dry and smooth.
Then the paper is rolled into large rolls, for example, rolls for preparing A4 sheets weigh about 35 tons and will contain 50 kilometers of paper. To make office paper, the spools are cut into smaller ones and sent to paper cutting devices. On these automated devices, production speeds reach 55,000 sheets per minute. And in an hour such a factory produces about 7,000 packages.
How paper is made from waste paper.
The principle of producing paper from waste paper remains the same - it is the production of cellulose. The technology for producing paper from waste paper differs from the production of paper from plant raw materials only up to the point of obtaining cellulose fibers from the source material.
The first step is to load the waste paper into a hydrobeater, which works on the principle of a kitchen blender. Under the influence of a mechanical process and water, waste paper is separated into fibers and turned into liquid paper pulp. Next, a chemical process occurs to separate the ink and impurities. The subsequent manufacturing process is identical to any other raw material. Substances are added, sent to the paper machine, rolled and cut.
The answer to the question of how paper is made today lies in technology. But it’s worth looking into history. The prototype of the material is ancient Egyptian papyrus - a plant from which writing material was made. The soaked core was joined by laying layers perpendicular to each other. After being kept under pressure, the sheets were dried in the sun, cut and polished. The finished flexible scrolls were durable - some have survived into the 21st century.
The production of paper from materials familiar to us has been put into production in China. From the 2nd century AD e. The technology for processing the bast of mulberry trees gradually began to spread throughout the world. First it moved from China to the Arab East, and then to Europe.
The first paper factories appeared in Europe in the 13th century. Since the 17th century, Russian industrialists began producing paper materials.
Some sheets of parchment are well preserved
Types of paper
To understand how paper is made, you must first determine its type, because the composition of the raw material can be different.
There are the following types of material:
- Offset. Widely used in printing - for printing books and mass printed products. The paper is resistant to moisture, which is important since humidifiers are used in offset printing.
- Packaging. Durable, impervious to moisture. There are no increased requirements for color and smoothness.
- Newspaper. Used for printing on high-speed equipment. Its feature is increased paint absorption.
- Coated. Differences from other types - whiteness, smoothness. High-quality illustrated publications are printed from it.
- Cellulose. Consists of pure cellulose plus 1-3% additives. Used for printing banknotes and securities.
Designer paper for gift wrapping
What is paper made from?
The raw materials are plant substances with long fibers. Mixing with water, they form a pliable, homogeneous semi-finished product. It is made from:
- wood - the mass is called cellulose;
- annual plants: material of increased whiteness is made from hemp or rice mass, strong and dense material is made from straw and reed;
- secondary raw materials - waste paper, rags;
- raw materials for the production of special-purpose paper - wool, asbestos and other fibers.
The main material in the paper industry is wood. Entire trunks are supplied to mills. There they remove the bark and cut them. Next, the raw materials are ground into flour - to fiber fibrils.
In this form, the wood is supplied for grinding into flour.
For paper production they use:
- pine, cedar - soft woods are suitable for the manufacture of packaging materials;
- maple, oak - the hardwood base is smooth, but less durable;
- Canadian spruce - a durable but elastic material is made from it;
- chestnut, birch and so on.
By mixing oak and pine raw materials, book paper is obtained. It is durable and elastic. To improve the quality of products, wood material is sorted, filtered, and treated with chemical compounds.
Production stages
The technology consists of the following stages:
- mass processing - grinding, dyeing, mixing plant and chemical components;
- diluting the mass with water, cleaning, pressing and drying;
- calendering;
- cutting, sorting and packaging.
The paper making process begins with grinding raw materials in continuously operating machines. Factories use rolls, conical and disk mills, and refiners.
The resulting flour is cleaned, a binder and filler are added:
- paraffin emulsions;
- alumina, kaolin;
- urea-, melamine-formaldehyde resin;
- rosin and animal glues;
- talc, starch, etc.
The liquid composition is poured onto the flat mesh of the paper machine. After compaction and molding, the solid web is coated with adhesive pigments (this is how coated paper is made) or other compounds.
The next stage is drying at elevated temperatures using grinding cylinders. The fibers harden to form a paper web. After dehydration, it goes into calenders. These are massive cylinders, united in 5-8 pieces. Passing between them, the paper becomes smooth, leveled, and compacted.
This is how paper dries
The finished tape is wound onto a reel - a rotating cylinder with a pressure roller. He collects the canvas into a roll. Paper production technology also involves post-processing - glossing, dyeing, cutting.
Cardboard is produced using the same principle - a material with a density of 250 g/m². Book covers, folders, packaging and other similar products are made from it.
Packing and cutting
The method of cutting paper rolls differs depending on the plans for its use. The rolls are cut in a slitter and then wound into several rolls of smaller volume and diameter. Then they are divided into ready-made sheets for the printing shop - for example, by laser (the edges are neat, there is no carbon deposits on them).
Finished paper rolls
The last stage of paper production is packaging. Its most common types:
- packaging in packs of 250-1,000 sheets, wrapped in kraft paper or other dense and waterproof material;
- palletizing - transferring sheets onto flat rectangular stands with recesses for gripping and fastening;
- mixed method - first the sheets are collected in bundles and then placed on pallets;
- “roll” packaging (rolls up to 10-15 kg) - suitable for technical, large-format packaging paper (can be carried manually, without ramps and special equipment).
Paper Quality Criteria
- Strength - resistance to tearing and compression during high-speed printing must be high.
- Density - thin sheets are used for intaglio printing, thick sheets are used for packaging (range - from 60 to 300 g/m²);
- Smoothness - the higher it is, the better the image details are reproduced, the tighter the contact of the sheets with the printing forms;
- Whiteness - the indicator falls in the range of 60-98%;
- Opacity - the less the sheet is translucent, the less will be the degree of image development on the reverse side (for ordinary office paper - from 89%);
- Porosity - paint adheres better to porous material, but the prints lose their saturation.
- Abrasion resistance - if it is low, the viscous printing inks will "pluck" fibers from the sheets, and this will contaminate the parts of the printing equipment.
- Absorbency - the higher it is, the faster the paint will adhere to the surface of the sheet.
- The presence of sizing - with it the top layer will be durable, resistant to moisture and glue.
Watch an interesting report from a paper production plant:
Results
- The first writing materials from plant materials appeared in Ancient Egypt and China.
- Today, various types of paper are produced from wood, annual plants, and recycled materials.
- The paper industry uses pulp from coniferous trees, oak, birch, and chestnut.
- Paper production technology involves grinding, pulp preparation, pressing, drying, calendering, and winding into rolls. Post-production steps are cutting and packaging.
- The quality of a material is determined by its density, opacity, smoothness and other parameters.
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