Qureshi University, Advanced courses, via cutting edge technology, News, Breaking News | Latest News And Media

Qureshi University, Advanced courses, via cutting edge technology, News, Breaking News | Latest News And Media | Current News

admin@qureshiuniversity.com

Toilet Paper

Have you ever thought about the origins of modern toilet papers?
How is toilet paper made?
What materials are used for the manufacturing process?

A roll of toilet paper.

Toilet paper is a soft tissue paper product primarily used to maintain personal hygiene after human defecation or urination.

Materials

Making toilet paper from the trees
recycled paper

Materials needed to make toilet paper are:
•Trees
•Water
•Chemicals for extracting fiber
•Bleaches like chlorine dioxide

For paper recycling, companies use oxygen, ozone, sodium hydroxide, or peroxide to whiten the recycled paper. Toilet paper is often perforated, scented, embossed and colored. There are several differences in manufacturing process depending on what materials are used to make toilet paper.

If toilet paper is made of recycled paper, process starts by many different kinds of paper being mixed together. Next step is choosing a solution to remove ink. Recycled paper needs to be washed and is often deinked prior to being pulped. Toilet paper is then pulverized and reformed into very thin and soft paper. At the end of process toilet paper is bleached and scented.

Toilet paper products vary greatly in the distinguishing technical factors: sizes, weights, roughness, softness, chemical residues, "finger-breakthrough" resistance, water-absorption, etc.

Quality is usually determined by the number of plies (stacked sheets), coarseness, and durability. Low grade institutional toilet paper is typically of the lowest grade of paper, has only one or two plies, is very coarse and sometimes contains small amounts of embedded unbleached/unpulped paper. Mid-grade two ply is somewhat textured to provide some softness and is somewhat stronger. Premium toilet paper may have lotion and wax and has two to four plies of very finely pulped paper.

In order to advance decomposition of the paper in septic tanks or drainage, the paper used has shorter fibres than facial tissue or writing paper. The manufacturer tries to reach an optimal balance between rapid decomposition (which requires shorter fibres) and sturdiness (which requires longer fibres).

Environmental considerations

One tree produces about 100 pounds (45 kg) of toilet paper and about 83 million rolls are produced per day. Global toilet paper production consumes 27,000 trees daily.

The average American uses 50 pounds (23 kg) of tissue paper per year which is 50% more than the average of other regions.

The Manufacturing Process

1.Trees arive at the mill and are debarked, a process that removes the tree's outer layer while leaving as much wood on the tree as possible.

2.The debarked logs are chipped into a uniform size approximately 1 in x 1/4 in. These small pieces make it easier to pulp the wood.

3.The batch of wood chipsbout 50 tonss then mixed with 10,000 gallons of cooking chemicals; the resultant slurry is sent to a 60-ft (18.3-m)-tall pressure cooker called a digester.

4.During the cooking, which can last up to three hours, much of the moisture in the wood is evaporated (wood chips contain about 50% moisture). The mixture is reduced to about 25 tons of cellulose fibers, lignin (which binds the wood fibers together) and other substances. Out of this, about 15 tons of usable fiber, called pulp, result from each cooked batch.

5.The pulp goes through a multistage washer system that removes most of the lignin and the cooking chemicals. This fluid, called black liquor, is separated from the pulp, which goes on to the next stage of production.

6.The washed pulp is sent to the bleach plant where a multistage chemical process removes color from the fiber. Residual lignin, the adhesive that binds fibers together, will yellow paper over time and must be bleached to make paper white.

7.The pulp is mixed with water again to produce paper stock, a mixture that is 99.5% water and 0.5% fiber. The paper stock is sprayed between moving mesh screens, which allow much of the water to drain. This produces an 18-ft (5.5-m) wide sheet of matted fiber at a rate of up to 6,500 ft (1981 m) per minute.

8.The mat is then transferred to a huge heated cylinder called a Yankee Dryer that presses and dries the paper to a final moisture content of about 5%.

9.Next, the paper is creped, a process that makes it very soft and gives it a slightly wrinkled look. During creping, the paper is scraped off the Yankee Dryer with a metal blade. This makes the sheets somewhat flexible but lowers their strength and thickness so that they virtually disintegrate when wet. The paper, which is produced at speeds over a mile a minute, is then wound on jumbo reels that can weigh as much as five tons.

10.The paper is then loaded onto converting machines that unwind, slit, and rewind it onto long thin cardboard tubing, making a paper log. The paper logs are then cut into rolls and wrapped packages. Recycled toilet paper Toilet tissue made from recycled paper is made from both colored and white stock, with staples and pins removed. The paper goes into a huge vat called a pulper that combines it with hot water and detergents to turn it into a liquid slurry. The recycled pulp then goes through a series of screens and rinses to remove paper coatings and inks. The pulp is whitened somewhat and sanitized with oxygen-based products like peroxide. It then goes through steps 7 through 10 like virgin paper products, producing a cheaper, less-white paper.

Quality Control

The chemicals used in the pulping process are also carefully tested and monitored. Temperatures at which a slurry is cooked is ensured, too, by checking gauges, machinery, and processes. Completed paper may be tested for a variety of qualities, including stretch, opacity, moisture content, smoothness, and color.

Byproducts/Waste

The first waste product produced in the papermaking process, the bark removed from tree trunks, burns easily and is used to help power the paper mills. In addition, black liquor, the fluid removed from the pulp after cooking, is further evaporated to a thick combustible liquid that is also used to power the mill. This reduction process, in turn, yields a byproduct called tall oil that is widely used many household products. About 95% of the cooking chemicals are recovered and reused.

But other problems associated with the industry are less easily solved. The production of virgin toilet paper has spawned two current controversies: the destruction of trees, and the use of chlorine dioxide to bleach the paper. While virgin paper processing does necessitate the destruction of trees, they are a readily renewable resource and paper companies maintain large forests to feed their supply. Despite this, some activists have proposed that toilet paper be manufactured only from recycled products and suggest that consumers boycott toilet paper made of new materials.

These activists object to new paper processing because it often uses chlorine bleaching, which produces dioxins, a family of chemicals considered environmental hazards, as a byproduct. Paper and pulp mills are the primary producers of dioxins, and manufacturers must carefully assess their effluvia to counteract the emission of dioxins. Increasingly, virgin paper makers use alternative bleaching methods that substitute oxygen, peroxide, and sodium hydroxide for chlorine. Some simply reduce the amount of chlorine used in the process. Others experiment with cooking the wood chips longer, removing more lignin earlier in the process, which requires less bleach. Better pulp washing also removes more lignin, and reduces the amount of bleach needed for whitening.