EVIDENCE FOR PAPER STRENGTH IMPROVEMENT BY INCLUSION OF FINES GENERATED FROM APMP OF EFB

The oil-palm empty fruit bunch (EFB) was subjected to alkaline peroxide mechanical pulping (APMP) treatment concept for pulp production and paper-making purposes. Analysis showed that tensile strength of the pulp network increased twice as much by blending the pulp with 12% of the 400-mesh fines fraction recovered from the refining and screening streams. It was also observed that the recovered 400-mesh fines carried many forms, some being pitted vessel elements with long tube-like shapes of varying diameters as a result of vessel elongation. The ‘split’ vessels, however, were resemblances of narrow fibres and this arose from the splitting that occurred along the perforation of the cell wall. In the paper formed by the EFB APMP pulp network, the various forms of vessel element inter-locked with each other, filling the micro-voids, which were initially present as a result of partial bonding between the incompletely-fibrillated fibre bundles. It was the filling effects of these fines elements that were responsible for improving the tensile strength of the produced handsheet by 100%.