Volume 3, Number 1
Mar 1990

News

• A count of U.S. fine paper mills, showing which are alkaline, and which plan to convert, has been made at the Newsletter office. It is not as accurate as it might be, but it is probably within 10% or 15%. It is hard for anyone to be accurate in generalizations about the paper industry, because some mills switch back and forth between acid and alkaline papermaking for one or more brands, others make a combination of technical and fine papers, or groundwood and freesheet grades, and so on. At any rate, by this count, there are about 153 fine paper mills in the U.S., out of a total of about 600 board and paper mills. About 45 are already alkaline, and about 40 more are slated for conversion or actually in trials. Of this 40, about 26 are due to convert this year, 1990.
  
  The mills that have already converted produce a total of about 14,575 tons Per day, or 324 tpd for the average mill. The mills slated for conversion average 664 tpd, over twice as much. This shows that the smaller mills led the way, and the larger ones are now following their example.
• Xerox is supplied by five paper companies in the U.S. and three in Canada. In 1988, paper from an alkaline mill qualified for the first time (i.e., met Xerox specs). Now there is another alkaline supplier, and two of the U.S. suppliers are alkaline. The name of the mill has not been announced because it is not Xerox's policy to reveal the of their paper suppliers.
• The Blue M Electric Company has a table-top aging oven that can do moist aging and sells for just under $3000. It plugs into an ordinary electrical outlet. Its catalog number is VP-100 and it is called the "Bell Jar Chamber." It is said to allow one to do rather sophisticated studies an a limited budget. For more information, write the company at 2218 W. 138th St., Blue Island, IL 60406 or call 708/ 385-9000.
• Since 1988 the (English) National Paper Museum has been housed at the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry in the North of England. Like the Dard Hunter Paper Museum in the United States, it is a collection of publications, paper samples and equipment relevant to the history of papermaking, and its obvious value has attracted paper conservators, who (in the case of the U.S. museum) have worked to improve the condition and storage of the items. An account of the National Paper Museum is in Paper Conservation News #52, December 1989, P. 9, by conservator Catherine Rickman, who visited it.
• In a March 6 Pira seminar on "Specialty Chemicals for the Paper Industry," Mr. Robin Cooper was scheduled to give a paper entitled "Styrene-Acrylate Polymer Additives for Strength Enhancement of Paper." The abstract says,

  Dussek Campbell have developed a new generation of cross-linkable styrene-acrylate polymers which have been found to offer economically significant increases in the strength of paper. The polymers described in this paper are marketed under the Technimul brand name. The results given in this paper show the level of improvement that may be obtained by treating recycled fiber based paper with Technimul polymers. A discussion is also included on the benefit of using a pressure impregnation system over a size press method of application.

• A Pira conference on "The Chemistry of Neutral Papermaking" was held January 30-31 in Stratford Upon Avon. Almost all the speakers were from suppliers.
• In a letter to Arms Lehn at the National Library of Canada, Mohawk Paper Mill representative Michael Bean gave the following information:

  All stock of Mohawk Paper Mills Cover and Text grades, with the exception of three Irish Linen colors and two Artemis colors, comply with ANSI Standard Z39.48-1984. The three Irish linen colors (Navy Blue, Forest Green and Autumn Red), as well as the two Artemis colors (Forest Green and Navy Blue), are alkaline, but do not meet the minimum equivalent of 2% calcium carbonate reserve.

• The 1990 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica will be printed on alkaline paper for the first time. The EB has several paper suppliers for security, so all the qualities of the paper from each supplier had to be checked out before the switch was made.
• More on dioxin: The following story is reprinted from ACTS FACTS, January 1990 (Monona Rossol, Ed., 181 Thompson St., #3, New York, NY 10012).

Dioxins Not Found In Mummies

(Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A5, Oct. 25, 1989)

Scientists have been looking for the sources of toxic dioxins which modern humans accumulate in their body tissues. Some experts have held the view that dioxins always have been around and that they are formed as byproducts of fuel combustion including wood burning. This theory is not borne out by studies of some 2,800-year-old mummies.

The mummies were of ancient Chileans, who cooked over wood fires. They were found to be free of dioxins. This evidence supports the view that dioxins are new to our environment, arising from industrial processes such as production of industrial oils, printing inks, resins, paints and herbicides.

• A two-year research project, "Preparation of High Value Paper Furnishes by Upgrading Waste Fibres," will be carried out at Pira, the (English) Research Association for the Paper and Board, Printing and Papermaking Industries, starting in April. According to the proposal, this project would examine the proposition that waste paper can be upgraded to provide a cost competitive source of fiber compared with timber. The laboratory program would examine both chemical and mechanical processes. Waste papers would be pulped, screened and fractionated. The enriched "long" fraction would be subjected to a variety of mild chemical digestion processes to remove or modify lignin and remove adhesive contaminants. The pulp produced would be bleached. Its potential for use in a number of products would then be assessed.