Introduction :

The jute industry generates about 40,0001 of processing waste as by-product, commonly known as caddies. The major constituent of this waste is unspinnable short jute fibre. The other constituents are batching oil, machine oil and grease, barks of the jute plant and inorganic dirts. Traditionally the jute industry used this waste along with coal as fuel for the boiler to generate steam which was required to run the sizing and calendering machines. Use of caddies as a fuel is problematic, mainly due its its poor fuel value or thermal efficiency1 and low bulk density. Besides this, during the past decade, there has been significant change in the products mix of the jute industry and sacking fabrics have emerged as the major product. Hessian and carpet backing fabrics, which are the major cause of steam consumption in a jute mill, are produced in a far less quantity than before, thereby lowering the requirement of steam by jute mills.

Attempts were made to utilize this industrial residue commercially for making needle-punched nonwoven fabrics. However, this effort met with only hmited and short-lived success, as the product was thick, oily and dark in colour. The mills producing such fabrics have almost stopped producing them because of lack of demand. Thus the industry is in a situation where, while a few mills are utilizing the caddies as a fuel alongwith coal, most of the mills are burdened with this unwanted inventory which requires lot of space for storing and is hazardous because of its propensity to catch fire.

Evidently, a huge quantity of fibrous industrial waste awaits proper utilization. It is felt that if suitable processes and products are developed, this material can feed some industries, thereby creating wealth and generating employment. Suitability of jute caddies for preparing adhesive-bonded light-weight nonwoven fabrics3 and paper2 have been investigated earlier. These products can have various applications. Here, an outline of the technological steps required to convert caddies to hand-made paper at a small capital cost for the tiny sector has been discussed.

Composition of Jute Caddies :

Caddies were obtained from three jute mills and analysed separately for their components. The composition of jute caddies was determined by removal of oil and grease by extraction with trichloroethylene under reflux in a Soxhlet apparatus for 6 h, followed by opening and cleaning in a trash analyzer. The oil and trash (bark, jute stick remnants, etc.) free material was treated with 0.5 per cent hydrochloric acid to remove the remaining inorganic impurities.

Process of Converting Caddies to Hand-made Paper :

Among the impurities present in caddies, oil, and grease have profound effect on the strength of the paper2. Besides this, it has been observed that removal of oil and grease, facilitates the removal of other impurities. Therefore, removal of oil and grease by a 'scouring' process forms an important step in the process for conversion of caddies to paper and the process of manufacturing paper would have the following unit operations.

Bale opening and removal of non-vegetative matters.
Scouring to remove oil and grease.

GANGULY el al : JUTE CADDIES — A POTENTIAL RAW MATERIAL FOR HAND - MADE PAPER

Table 4 — Physical and Mechanical properties of hand-made paper prepared from scoured and cleaned jute caddies

Sample No.	Gum additive (per cent)	Area density (g/m²)	Tensile index (N-m/g)	Bursting index (kPa m²/g)	Fold endurance no.	Density (g/cm³)
1	Nil	70	11.8	1.01	10	0.65
2	Nil	110	22.0	1.12	10	0.63
3	Nil	140	24.2	1.19	12	0.64
4	Nil	160	26.6	1.26	11	0.65
5	2.0	140	25.3	1.88	10	0.66
6	2.0	160	28.1	1.99	12	0.65

are reported in Table 1. It was observed that caddies contained 80-86 per cent short fibres and about 15 per cent impurities, constituting mainly oil and grease, bark and stick remnants and clay and dirt which were required to be removed to make it suitable for making paper. The effect of oil and grease content in the pulp on the strength properties of hand-paper made from scoured and cleaned caddies are reported in Table 2. It was found that strength properties of paper increased with decrease in oil and grease content and 1.5 per cent or less oil content in the pulp enabled the manufacture of hand-made paper reasonably strong and suitable for making paper bags for grocery and shopping. Besides, removal of oil and grease from caddies facilitated removal of other impurities. Therefore, removal of oil and grease by a scouring process would be the first technological step to clean caddies from impurities for its conversion to paper. A comparative data on impurities removed from caddies by various scouring methods in both aqueous and nonaqueous systems are presented in Table 3. Removal of impurities was found to be maximum (10.36 per cent) with 1.42 per cent residual oil content by scouring caddies with a combination of sodium hydroxide (3 per cent) and a detergent (0.25 per cent) at 30°C for 1 h while extraction with hot toluene or n-hexane removed maximum oil content (0.56 and 0.53 per cent residual oil contents, respectively). The physical and mechanical properties of hand-made paper, prepared from scoured and cleaned jute caddies having 0.8 per cent oil content are presented in Table 4. Both the tensile index and bursting index increased with area density of paper and addition of gum in the pulp while fold endurance number was in the range of 10-12.

The strength properties of hand-made paper prepared from scoured and cleaned jute caddies by a simple process of swelling and mechanical pulping indicate its suitability for making paper bags for shopping and grocery. Thus the huge amount of industrial residue can be converted to hand-made paper and paper bags by an easily adoptable technology with little energy consumption. These eco-friendly paper bags have a good market potential in view of increasing restriction on the use of non-biodegradable plastic carry-bags due to their negative environmental and ecological impact. The technology is viable and easily adoptable, particularly in the rural sector, with less investment and potential for employment generation.

References

Samani A, Pandey K K & Reddy K S, Economics of biomass energy conversion system, Wood News, 13 (2003) 22
Roy A K, Jute caddies as raw material for paper making, Indian Pulp Pap, (1982) 22
Non-woven technology, p. 29-41 in Fifty years of research-Jute technological research laboratories, edited by S N Pandey and S R Ananthakrishnan (Jute Technological Research Laboratories, ICAR, Kolkata) 1990.

Opening and cleaning to remove barks, roots, inorganic dust, etc.
Pre-treatment (swelling, bleaching, etc.).
Preparation of the pulp.
Paper formation.
Calendering, Trimming, etc.

Scouring of Caddies :

Caddies can be scoured by an aqueous or a nonaqueous method. While the aqueous method has the advantage of employing simple equipments like, steel vat, it generates effluents. Non-aqueous scouring method employing solvents like n-hexane or toluene, though efficient and clean, requires much higher capital investment and working capital. Jute caddies were scoured with different chemicals in aqueous system as well as with organic solvents in a nonaqueous system at different temperatures and time intervals.

Opening and Cleaning of Scoured Caddies :

The scoured caddies contained remnants of plant bark, broken pieces of jute stick, thick fibrous roots and some dust. Opening and cleaning operation to remove these materials was carried out, using an opener machine which used both mechanical and pneumatic actions to clean the fibres. If the caddies are not cleaned before pulping the paper obtained is dotted with tiny dark spots of bark and dust particles.

Pre-treatment, Pulping and Paper-making :

Pre-treatment is normally done to swell the fibres before subjecting them to mechanical pulping. Swelling of caddies was done in water for 24 h. Urea solution is also used for swelling. The fibres can also be bleached before pulping. A valley beater and standard hand-made paper-making equipments were used for converting the fibres to hand-made paper

Table 1—Composition of jute caddies
Constituent	Average value (per cent)	Range (per cent)
Fibre (3 mm-100 mm)	85	(80-86)
Oil and grease	5.0	(3.5-6.5)
Bark, root and jute stick remanants	5.0	(4-6)
Clay and dirt	4.5	(4-6)
Foreign matter (Non-vegitative)	1.0	(0.5-1.5)

Values are expressed on oven-dry weight of caddies

sheets. This was followed by drying in air, calendering and trimming of the calendered paper sheets. The sheets were tested for physical and mechanical properties by standard methods.

Results and Discussion :

The composition of jute caddies, obtained from three jute mills were analysed and the average values

Table 2—Effect of oil and grease content on properties of hand-made paper prepared from scoured and cleaned caddies
Oil/grease content (per cent)	Tensile index (N-m/g)	Fold endurance no.
5	0.6	1
4	1.7	1-2
2.8	8.3	4
1.5	20.2	9-10
1.0	16.8	12
0.5	19.0	14

Now we like tom mention here that the all above information is collected from Journal of Scientific & Industrial Research Vol. 63, May 2004, pp. 417-419

We are exporting above product raw material regularly.

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15 Metric Ton/Metric Tons

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Flat, Folded, Slippery packing, etc..

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Source : BJMC