sign in sign up
<<
Home , Friedrich Gottlob Keller, Paper mill

1

Born as twins - and recycling

Boris Fuchs, Frankenthal, Germany

Abstract: It will be shown that in the year 105 AD., when the purchasing administrator at the Chinese Emperor’s Court, G-ii Ltm, invented, or better said, recorded the papermaking process, it was common practice to recycle used textile clothes, fishing nets and the hemp material of ropes to get a better and cheaper (less labour intensive) raw material for papermaking than the bark of mulberry trees, bamboo and china grass. When the art of papemaking, on its long march through the Arabian World, came to Europe, used textile rags were the only raw material, thus recycling was again closely related to papermaking, and to secure the -maker’s business base, it was strictly forbidden to export textile rags to other countries. Despite heavy punishments, smuggling flourished at that time. The &inking process was invented in 1774 by Julius Claproth and bleaching by Claude Louis Berthollet in 1785, but with the introduction of ground wood in 1845 by Friedrich Keller, recycling lost its preferential status in the paper manufacmring industry by the second half of the 20ti century, when economic considerations, especially in Central Europe, caused its comeback, long before ecological demands forced its reintroduction and environmental legislation was set in place. Thus recycling with papermaking is not an invention of the present time, but a twin arrangement right from the beginning. For the future, a certain balance between primary and secondary fibre input should be kept to avoid any collapse in the paper strength by too often repeated recycling., also to assist the forest industry in keeping our forests clean and healthy. and environmental protection are generally seen as the two sides of the same coin, which complement one other. But in the following, in a historical review, I will explain to you: - that paper recycling already existed long before environmental thinking determined our industrial actions; in fact, that papermaking and recycling were born as twins, - that paper recycling has always been driven more by economic considerations than by ecological ones, and - that overdone environmental legislation may in the end be to the detriment of the environment.

When in 105 A.D. the purchasing administrator at the Court of the Chinese Emperor Hi Di of the Eastern Han dynasty invented, or better said, recorded the papermaking process, which already then had been long in existence (sources have been found from 12 B.D.), it was common practice to recycle used textile clothes, fishing nets and the hemp material of ropes. The predecessors of Cai Lun used recycled silk rags, while Cai Lun’s invention was mainly determined by the introduction of the bark of mulberry trees, bamboo and china grass as an alternative material for papermaking (Liu Guojun, 1988). Thus, recycling has been with us since the early beginning of papermaking by transforming silk and textile rags into paper, but the strict environment protectors of today would call this “down-cycling” and would not accept this as a true recycling process. Only when the same is produced out of the same is their recycling definition fulfilled.

While the Koreans and Japanese, when the art ofpapermaking came to them, continued to use the straw of rice plants, as well as the fibre material of the Mitsumata and Gampy plants as a raw material for papermaking, this possibility was totally forgotten when the art came to the West on its long march through the Arabian World (Walter Brecht, 1989). Used textile rags corn hemp and flax were the only raw material left in their experiences. This was also true, when papermaking came to Europe in the 12& (Spain, France), 13* (Italy) and 14* (Germany) centuries and it continued to be so up to the mid-19* century.

With the growing demand for paper, textile rags became in shorter and shorter supply. As a result, in 1855 a man called Doctor Deck in Syracuse, New York, hit on a somewhat strange idea, which he published in the newspaper “Syracuse Standard” (Wilhelm Sandmann, 1977). 2

He explained in this article that the 800 paper mills in North America at that time required a total of 450 mio, pounds of textile rags every year. To cover this huge demand, the mummies in Egypt could contribute to a large extent, because each of those was wrapped by around 30 pounds of linen. And because the Egyptians also burried their holy bulls, cats, ibisses and crocodiles in this way, this could be considered a significant source of raw materiaL While in the USA one pound of textile rags cost between 4 and 6 cents each, those mummy linen rags could be delivered for just 3 cents, which is why he claimed his proposal to be a very economically efficient one.

On the other hand, his proposal was not as new as expected, In a travel report of a medical doctor from in 1140 it was said: “The Beduins and Fellahs are visiting the old Negropoles to search for textiles in which the mummies are wrapped, and if these are not for use for their own clothes, they sell them to paper mills, which make paper out of them for the food market.”

With this strong dependence on a single raw material source, it is understandable that smuggling these materials across the borders was put under heavy punishment, but despite this, the smuggling business flourished.

Because bleaching was not yet available, the rags and used textile clothes had to be selected to obtain “snow-white” paper as the final product. This selection process was not a clean and healthy job from the beginning even up to the present day, when textile rag selection was replaced by garbage and waste paper sorting. Preference was given in this respect to imported rags from specific counties, like the Netherlands, when Christoph Kefferstein, owner of the Criillwitz in 1756 said: “There are no quality rags in this country like those of the Dutch and East-Frisian types!“(Frieder Schmidt,1 997). This may have been another reason for smuggling textile rags over borders.

The situation changed only when the chemical bleaching procedure was invented, so that papermakers could make use of cheaper rags and still meet the high demands of their customers. In 1774, the Swedish chemist Karl Wilhelm Scheele discovered elementary chlorine and in 1785/86 the French chemist Claude Louis Berthollet for the first time was succes&tl in his bleaching trials with chlorine. But it took up to 1793 (Johann Gottlob Tenner) and 183 1 (Wilhelm Heinrich von Kurrer) for this process to become known and widely used in Central Europe. Today, bleaching by chlorine is strictly forbidden for environmental reasons and has been replaced by oxygen bleaching.

That apart from textile rags, waste paper, i.e. paper recycling, must have been an alternative as raw material for paper-making already in the 14”h century, was reported by Dieter Porthmann at an APV Annual Conference in Darmstadt (Dieter Porthmann, 1996), by citing a literature source from Georg Friedrich Wehrs of the year 1789 (Georg Friedrich Wehrs, 1789), according to which the city council of Venice, Italy, on August 19, 1366, had given a permission (privilege) for waste paper collection to the paper mill in Treviso. Under threat of heavy punishment it was forbidden to bring paper of this kind to any other place than the paper mill in Treviso. Certainly, this waste paper contained at least some writing ink. But how had this been removed before recycling?

A first source of the invention of the so called de&king process is to be found not before the year 1774, when Justus Claproth, professor of law at the university of G&tingen, Germany, published a book with the title: “Eine Erfindung aus gedrucktem Papier wiederum neues Papier zu machen und die Druckfarbe viillig heraus zu waschen.” (An invention to make new

3 3 paper out of printed paper and to wash-out the ink comletely). Facsimiles of this booklet have been published later (Forderverein Historische Spinnerei Gartetal e.V.,1996) In this book, a detailed description of the recipe of the de-inking process is given, as Justus Claproth had invented it, with turpentine to re-wet the ink first and a kind of clay to wash the ink out of the paper fibres. He also reported from his experiences gained at the paper mill of the papermaker Schmidt in Klein-Lengarden near G&tingen - the paper mill later on was tranformed into a spinning mill and now is an industrial museum - and claimed it economic advantages for it by stating the following: - less time and labour intensive, thus cheaper in its total manufacturing costs, - while rags have to spend 24 hours in the stamper, recycled material needs only 12 hours and less, - in the beater, rags have to spend 12 hours, while recycled material only for 2 hours.

But Claproth’s invention did not achieve a breakthrough at that time and was more or less forgotten over the years. This is why waste paper for long was only used for brown packaging paper and , but not for printed matters.

Even after ground-wood as a new raw material for paper-making was invented in 1845 by in Saxony and was turned into a manufacturing process by the papermaker Heimich Voelter in Bautzen and the mechanics J.M. in Heidenheim, de- inking long remained an unknown possibility.

Still in 1915, the weekly magazine “Prometheus” (Prometheus, 1915) complained in an article: “It is a shame that only 10% of all printed matters and other paper products are returned to paper mills, while 90% is spoiled and wasted! ”

It was not before the early 1950s that the de-inking process came to the fore. Two alternatives had been developed: the flotation process and the wash process. While the latter was mainly in use in North America, the former became the primary process in Central Europe. The Voith company in Heidenheim, Germany, played a major role in the development of the flotation process for papermaking, its basic principle derived from the mineral and mining industry. With further developments the flotation process proved to be more economically efficient compared to the wash process, which is why nowadays also paper mills in the USA are switching to this method.

A very detailed description of these early recycling techniques can be found in a text book (Heinz Mack, 1954), which my friend Adi Falter, Secretary General of IARIGAI has lent me from his student days for when I was preparing this speech.

The newspaper industry was paving the way for de-inking and recycling at the beginning of the 197Os, when the Scandinavian and Finnish paper mills introduced TMP (thermo- mechanical ) with and were able to reduce the by this, while the Central European paper mills, not having such cheap energy costs available, increased the recycled content instead up to the present level of lOO%, or 118% resp., to compensate manufacturing losses. The prime reason for doing this was to save energy costs (Hans- Joachim Putz, 1997), as only halfthe capacity is needed with de-inking, compared to TMJ?.

It was end of the 1970s that Greenpeace created the recycling idea as a means for the protection of the environment, and thus added the environmental stamp of approval to the economic advantages. In turn, this caused a wave of investments on the part of the Scandinavian and Finnish Paper mant&actureres in Central Europe, aimed at avoiding transportation over long distances for importing recycling material to their countries. On the other hand, by moving to Central Europe, these paper mills remove themselves more and more from their forest bases, which certainly has a strong influence on their forest industry.

The German paper manufacturers so far could avoid any quota regulation on recycled content in all paper grades, as is the case in USA, by giving a pledge to the public to reach an overall content level of 60% by the year 2000. In reality this level was reached already in 1997. This was possible, because all new paper mills for newsprint were designed for a lOO%, or 118% resp., recycled input, and because of the shift from north to the south many of them have been built in recent years..

But when forcing also magazine and office papers to go the same way, this could have a negative influence on paper strength as Lothar Gattsching proved with his “Recycling World Model” (Lothar Giittsching, 1997). A collapse of the whole system would be unavoidable, when all paper grades would go on 100% recycled content. If such a legislation should be set, even the Central European newsprint mills would have to re-introduce primary fibre material’ like ground-wood and/or TMP, to replace secondary fibres such as de-inked pulp, so that this legislation in the end would cause the opposite of its intented purpose.

References: Walter Brecht: “Die Rohstoffe der Papierfabrikation im Wandel der Zeit”, Archiv fiir Druck und Papier 6, 1960, pages 189-208

Fiirderverein Historische Spinnerei Gartetal e.V. : “Die Erfindung des Papierrecyclings”, G&tingen, 1996

Lothar Giittsching: “Ohne Primarfasern kein funktionierende Recyclingsysteme”, Das Papier 5 1, 1997, pages V 60-63

Liu Guojun / Zheng Rusi: “Die Geschichte des chinesischen Buches”, Verlag fiir fiemdsprachliche Literatur, Beijing, 1988, ISBN 7-119-00661-4

Heinz Mack “Altpapieraufbereitung”, Dr. Starulig-Verlag, Wiesbaden, 1954

Dieter Pothmam: “Altpapiereinsatz im 18. Jahrhundert” ,Wochenblatt%r die Papierfabrikation 124,1996. pages SO-86

Hans-Joachim Putz / Edik Tibor Phitzer: “Zeitungspapier aus Altpapier oder TMP-Einfhisse aufEnergieverbrauch und LuRemission”, Das Papier 51, 1997, pages V 215-222

Wilhelm Sandmann: “Papier, eine Kuhurgeschichte”, erg. u. bearb. von Klaus Ho&arm, 3. A&l., Berlin, 1997, pg. 149

Friedrich Schmidt: “Tenner, Engels, von Kurrer ua.: 200 Jahre Bleiche von PapierfBserstoff’, PTS-Symposium PapierfaserstofRechnik ‘97, Vortragsband 01/97, pages 34-l through 34-18

GeorgFriedrichWehrs:“Vom Papier, den vor der Erfindung desselben tiblichen Schreibmassen und sonstigen Schreibmaterialien”, Halle, 1789

A