Wood
(pun intended!) you believe paper is made from trees? It’s true! Let’s
take a look at how trees are turned into all sorts of paper.
If you look at a tree, you might have a hard time imagining how
something so tall and strong could be turned into something as thin and
weak as a sheet of paper. The process begins with the raw wood, which is
made up of
fibers called “
cellulose.”
The
cellulose fibers are stuck together with a natural glue called “
lignin.” When the
lignin is removed and the
cellulose fibers are separated and reorganized, paper can be made.
It’s also possible to make paper from a variety of other types of plant
fibers, such as cotton, flax, bamboo and hemp. For example, cotton
fibers are often used to make the
paper that money is printed on. The overwhelming majority (about 95 percent) of the raw material used to make paper, though, comes from trees.
To make paper from trees, the raw wood must first be turned into “
pulp.” Wood
pulp is a watery “soup” of
cellulose wood
fibers,
lignin, water and the
chemicals used during the
pulping process.
Wood can be turned to
pulp in a couple of different ways.
Mechanical pulping involves using machines to grind wood chips into
pulp.
The resulting
pulp retains most of its
lignin, though. The short
fibers created by grinding leads to weak paper most suitable for
newsprint, phone books or other types of low-strength papers.
The more commonly used method is
chemical pulping, also known as “kraft.”
Chemicals are used to separate
lignin from the
cellulose fibers, leaving a
pulp mixture that can make stronger papers.
Depending on what type of paper is desired, the
pulp mixture might need to be
bleached to create whiter paper. Papermakers use a variety of
chemicals to
bleach pulp to the color they want.
Once the
pulp is ready, it is then
used to make paper in a process that is quite similar (in the basics) to
the process first used by the ancient Chinese more than 1,900 years
ago. Because the
pulp mixture is so watery (sometimes as much as 99 percent water!), the
cellulose fibers need to be separated from the watery mixture.
Huge machines spray the
pulp mixture onto moving mesh screens to make a layered mat. The mat of
pulp then goes through several processes to remove water and dry it out.
Finally, the mat is run through heated rollers to squeeze out any
remaining water and compress it into one continuous roll of paper that
can be up to 30 feet wide.
When the paper has the desired thickness, it may be colored or coated with special
chemicals
to give it a special texture, extra strength or water resistance. As a
last step, the paper rolls are cut to size and packaged for shipping to
other facilities for additional processing to turn it into all sorts of
specialized papers.
- See more at: http://wonderopolis.org/wonder/how-do-you-make-paper-from-a-tree/#sthash.flKWlMj0.dpuf
Paper Process
Paper is made from one of Earth's greatest renewable resources-trees.
We use two raw materials to create our newsprint and publishing papers:
wood chips and recycled newspapers and magazines. Residual wood chips,
which remain after sawmills have optimized the cutting of logs into
lumber, are sent to our Long
view.
Thermo Mechanical Pulp
The wood chips undergo a modern process called thermo mechanical
pulping, which creates a high-yield pulp that is 100 percent more
efficient than pulp derived from the conventional kraft process. This
method softens the chips with steam and separates them into fibers using
two large counter-rotating disks.
Recycled Paper
Recycled newspapers and magazines are sorted in a large rotating drum
to remove any plastic, glass, and metal. Water is added and the
material becomes pulp slurry. To remove old ink, the pulp slurry is put
in a state-of-the-art flotation tank and tiny air bubbles are injected.
The ink particles float to the surface and are skimmed off. The pulp is
then washed and the water is squeezed off before hydrogen peroxide is
added to make the pulp whiter.
Producing Paper
Pulp slurry is still 99 percent water. To create paper, the slurry is
sprayed onto large moving screens that form a continuous sheet and
moisture is removed using presses and steam dryers, reducing the water
content to about 8 percent. At this point, the material looks and feels
like the paper you expect. It is then wound on a reel and transferred to
an overhead crane, which takes it to a winder. The paper is rewound
onto smaller rolls and cut into specified widths for each customer.
After being wrapped and labeled with customer information, the paper is
ready to ship to publishers and printers throughout North America,
Japan, and the rest of the world.
Distribution
Each day, we produce newsprint equivalent to a 30-foot-wide sheet
that extends from Seattle to Miami. This paper is stored in our six-acre
shipping warehouse, which uses state-of-the-art vacuum trucks to
minimize damage to rolls. A ship loaded with about 13,500 rolls of paper
departs for Japan from our mill every two weeks. And we load an average
of 45 trucks and 10 railcars daily.
NORPAC paper is a sound environmental choice. It comes from a
natural, renewable resource and is recycled and reused time after time.
In fact, you could receive some of the same wood fiber in your daily
newspaper as many as 10 times.
Wood
(pun intended!) you believe paper is made from trees? It’s true! Let’s
take a look at how trees are turned into all sorts of paper.
If you look at a tree, you might have a hard time imagining how
something so tall and strong could be turned into something as thin and
weak as a sheet of paper. The process begins with the raw wood, which is
made up of
fibers called “
cellulose.”
The
cellulose fibers are stuck together with a natural glue called “
lignin.” When the
lignin is removed and the
cellulose fibers are separated and reorganized, paper can be made.
It’s also possible to make paper from a variety of other types of plant
fibers, such as cotton, flax, bamboo and hemp. For example, cotton
fibers are often used to make the
paper that money is printed on. The overwhelming majority (about 95 percent) of the raw material used to make paper, though, comes from trees.
To make paper from trees, the raw wood must first be turned into “
pulp.” Wood
pulp is a watery “soup” of
cellulose wood
fibers,
lignin, water and the
chemicals used during the
pulping process.
Wood can be turned to
pulp in a couple of different ways.
Mechanical pulping involves using machines to grind wood chips into
pulp.
The resulting
pulp retains most of its
lignin, though. The short
fibers created by grinding leads to weak paper most suitable for
newsprint, phone books or other types of low-strength papers.
The more commonly used method is
chemical pulping, also known as “kraft.”
Chemicals are used to separate
lignin from the
cellulose fibers, leaving a
pulp mixture that can make stronger papers.
Depending on what type of paper is desired, the
pulp mixture might need to be
bleached to create whiter paper. Papermakers use a variety of
chemicals to
bleach pulp to the color they want.
Once the
pulp is ready, it is then
used to make paper in a process that is quite similar (in the basics) to
the process first used by the ancient Chinese more than 1,900 years
ago. Because the
pulp mixture is so watery (sometimes as much as 99 percent water!), the
cellulose fibers need to be separated from the watery mixture.
Huge machines spray the
pulp mixture onto moving mesh screens to make a layered mat. The mat of
pulp then goes through several processes to remove water and dry it out.
Finally, the mat is run through heated rollers to squeeze out any
remaining water and compress it into one continuous roll of paper that
can be up to 30 feet wide.
When the paper has the desired thickness, it may be colored or coated with special
chemicals
to give it a special texture, extra strength or water resistance. As a
last step, the paper rolls are cut to size and packaged for shipping to
other facilities for additional processing to turn it into all sorts of
specialized papers
- See more at: http://wonderopolis.org/wonder/how-do-you-make-paper-from-a-tree/#sthash.flKWlMj0.dpuf
Wood
(pun intended!) you believe paper is made from trees? It’s true! Let’s
take a look at how trees are turned into all sorts of paper.
If you look at a tree, you might have a hard time imagining how
something so tall and strong could be turned into something as thin and
weak as a sheet of paper. The process begins with the raw wood, which is
made up of
fibers called “
cellulose.”
The
cellulose fibers are stuck together with a natural glue called “
lignin.” When the
lignin is removed and the
cellulose fibers are separated and reorganized, paper can be made.
It’s also possible to make paper from a variety of other types of plant
fibers, such as cotton, flax, bamboo and hemp. For example, cotton
fibers are often used to make the
paper that money is printed on. The overwhelming majority (about 95 percent) of the raw material used to make paper, though, comes from trees.
To make paper from trees, the raw wood must first be turned into “
pulp.” Wood
pulp is a watery “soup” of
cellulose wood
fibers,
lignin, water and the
chemicals used during the
pulping process.
Wood can be turned to
pulp in a couple of different ways.
Mechanical pulping involves using machines to grind wood chips into
pulp.
The resulting
pulp retains most of its
lignin, though. The short
fibers created by grinding leads to weak paper most suitable for
newsprint, phone books or other types of low-strength papers.
The more commonly used method is
chemical pulping, also known as “kraft.”
Chemicals are used to separate
lignin from the
cellulose fibers, leaving a
pulp mixture that can make stronger papers.
Depending on what type of paper is desired, the
pulp mixture might need to be
bleached to create whiter paper. Papermakers use a variety of
chemicals to
bleach pulp to the color they want.
Once the
pulp is ready, it is then
used to make paper in a process that is quite similar (in the basics) to
the process first used by the ancient Chinese more than 1,900 years
ago. Because the
pulp mixture is so watery (sometimes as much as 99 percent water!), the
cellulose fibers need to be separated from the watery mixture.
Huge machines spray the
pulp mixture onto moving mesh screens to make a layered mat. The mat of
pulp then goes through several processes to remove water and dry it out.
Finally, the mat is run through heated rollers to squeeze out any
remaining water and compress it into one continuous roll of paper that
can be up to 30 feet wide.
When the paper has the desired thickness, it may be colored or coated with special
chemicals
to give it a special texture, extra strength or water resistance. As a
last step, the paper rolls are cut to size and packaged for shipping to
other facilities for additional processing to turn it into all sorts of
specialized papers.
- See more at: http://wonderopolis.org/wonder/how-do-you-make-paper-from-a-tree/#sthash.flKWlMj0.dpuf