Preparation of Waste Paper Fibrous Cement and Studying of Some Physical Properties

Abstract

Waste paper is available in environment from different sources, such as office, newspaper and markets. Waste papers are the abundant source of cellulose and may be used as landfill. Using of these wastes in building materials has two benefits, the first one has reduced the environmental pollution and the second improves the physical properties of concrete and building bricks (or blocks). Addition of waste paper cellulose to concrete at certain percentage improve its thermal insulation properties and affect its density to produce lightweight and insulating building materials. The material which produces by using waste paper is called papercrete. It is a mixture of waste paper pulp, sand, cement and water by replacing the cement by waste paper pulp at a certain percentage. Also fibrous cement could be produced by mixing of waste paper pulp with cement and water.

In the current work the waste paper was processed to obtain the raw materials of papercrete and fibrous cement. The processing method includes a sequence of processes which are shredding, soaking, mixing, dewatering and drying. In the dewatering process, a wet pulp was obtained and it can be used as it is in the mixtures of papercrete or fibrous cement. A dry pulp also could be used. It is observed that one kilogram of office paper and that of newspaper produces 3.24 kg and 3.26 kg of wet paper pulp respectively. The dry pulp, which is produced during the drying process is 0.954 kg and 0.949 kg for 1 kg of office paper and newspaper respectively. Design of mix proportion, test of water absorption, apparent porosity and drying curve of samples with different percentage of paper pulp were investigated in the present work.

Keywords: wastepaper, papercrete, fibrous cement, porosity, water absorption, bulk density