The effect of pulping time and alkali charge on the efficiency of soda pulping using banana stem: article / Nur Syafiqah Jusoh

The demand in pulp and paper industry has increased greatly as the world population using more and more papers every day. Since most papers are made from wood which makes the production hugely relies on the forest resources, huge areas of rainforest are getting destroyed every year. The main objectives of this research are to produce nonwood pulp from banana stem using soda pulping process and to analyze the efficiency of the soda pulping process by yield and also the kappa number of the resulting banana pulp. Pseudo stem are really suitable for pulping in paper industry. Banana fibers have great physical strength properties. The first step in this experiment is the preparation of the raw material. Then the soda pulping experiment is conducted with time and soda concentration as manipulated variable. The sample from the soda pulping is then dried to get the dried pulp. The dried pulp is characterized with yield, Kappa number. For cooking time, the shortest time at 60 min obtained the highest average yield at 39.47%. For the test of different concentration, the yield obtained the lowest yield at 16% concentration which is only 27.61%. The kappa number pattern for different concentration is decreasing with the increase of concentration. At 16% concentration the kappa number was 35.05 and at 20% the kappa number was 29.66%. Shorter cooking time and lower concentration of sodium hydroxide can give you higher yield, but it will also have higher bleachability and vice versa.