Paper Production Methods

Paper is an important product which has a major place in our lives. This essential product was first invented around 100 BC in China and we have been using it ever since.

The Manufacturing Processes

The production of paper can be done in two ways: manual and industrial. In manual papermaking, fibres get diluted in water than this suspension drains through a screen to produce a mat of interwoven fibres. This method has not changed much over the years. They are five steps to produce paper manually. First, the fibre gets separated from the rest of the raw materials. Then comes beating down the fibre into pulp. For the third step the colour, mechanical, chemical, biological, and other properties of the paper are adjusted by adding special chemical premixes. Once all the extra materials are mixed the resulting solution gets screened and finally, the actual paper gets pressed and dyed.

If you are producing a paper using industrial methods then that means the human workforce you need will be less and the production will be faster. Today, with technological developments, industrial production is widely used. In fact, it is almost impossible to see a company using manual papermaking methods. The first step is refining pulp and mixing it in water with other additives to make a pulp slurry. The fourdrinier machine distributes the slurry pulp onto a moving screen to drain the water from the slurry. Then the wet sheet goes through presses and dries. To finalize, dried paper sheets rolls into large rolls. With this method, the producer can get several tons of product in the end. There is one more alternative in industrial papermaking, which is the use of a cylinder mould. The mould rotates while partially immersed in a vat of dilute pulp. The wires pick up the pulp and cover the mould as it rises out of the vat. Finally, a couch roller presses the mould to smoothen the pulp and picks the wet sheet off the mould.