Straw and rice husk and their suitability for paper production

Abstract

Various agricultural residues such as sugarcane bagasse, rice straw and rice husk have taken a significant place in supplementing the dwindling supply of conventional forest raw material for catering the ever-increasing demand on the pulp and paper industry. Production of pulp from non-wood resources has many advantages such as easy pulping capability. But the main reasons for the decreased use of these residues in the paper industry is due to the presence of large amount of pentosanes in the pulp and black liquors, which also contain silica. The silica content can limiting the use of the residues in paper mills. In this study, the agriculture residues were characterized by scanning electron microscope (SEM) with using energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS) technique. Results showed that sugarcane bagasse has lowest content of silica, 9.78 % and highest content of carbon, 90.22 % compare to rice straw and rice husk.