A moist-liberation process for producing dry secondary fibers

This study verified the feasibility of liberating secondary fibers from wastepaper webs by weakening interfiber hydrogen bonds of paper webs with water, and processing with an atmospheric pressure single-rotation disc refiner and a fiber separator and dryer. The intent was to liberate secondary fibers from paper webs while retaining most fiber integrity without employing the highly water-dependent hydrocoupling operation that characterizes the wet-liberation process widely used by the pulp and paper industry. Eliminating the hydropulping would eliminate the need for water-pollution-abatement operations. The effectiveness of this moist-liberation process (no hydropulping) was indirectly verified by the fact that flexural strength and water-related physical properties of moist-liberated old corrugated container (OCC) secondary fiber composites (bonded with a very high polyisocyanate resin level using a dry-consolidation process) are comparable to those of wet-liberation processed (hydropulped) OCC secondary fibers.

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