Hebrew University student turns paper mill waste into ‘green’ material for industrial applications

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http://www.huji.ac.il/cgi-bin/dovrut/dovrut_search_eng.pl?mesge131227528132688760

02 August, 2011

Hebrew University student turns paper mill waste into ‘green’ material for industrial applications

A method to use paper mill waste to produce ecologically friendly, industrial foams from renewable resources has been developed by a graduate student in agriculture at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Foams are used for numerous day-to-day uses, including in the manufacture of furniture and car interiors. In many composite material applications, they are used as core material in “sandwich” panels to achieve high strength, weight reduction, energy dissipation and insulation. Conventional foams are produced from polymers such as polyurethane, polystyrene, polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Since all of these current foams rely on fossil oil, they present a clear environmental disadvantage.

Shaul Lapidot, a Ph.D. student of Prof. Oded Shoseyov, along with his laboratory colleagues at the Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment of the Hebrew University in Rehovot, has formulated a procedure for production of nano-crystalline cellulose (NCC) from paper mill waste. NCC is further processed into composite foams for applications in the composite materials industry as bio-based replacement for synthetic foams.

The process of paper production involves loss of all fibers with dimensions lower than the forming fabric mesh. Consequently around 50% of the total fibers initially produced are washed away as sludge. In Europe alone, 11 million tons of waste are produced annually by this industry, creating an incentive for finding alternative uses and different applications for the wastes.

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