Improving The Performance of Local Manufactured Paperboard

High strength and environmentally friendly packaging paperboard is currently asked in industry. The present workis focused on preparing paperboard from rice straw pulpapplying acetic acid / water mixture to cook rice straw. Three ratios of acetic acid namely 30, 40, 50% were used at 140C⁰ for 90 minutes. The strength of the produced pulp was weak and was not enough to meet the challenges of industrial packaging. So, rice strawas virgin pulp was blended with recycledduplex paperboard by different percentage and top layer of wood pulp to give paperboard of basis weight 280 g/cm2.The blended ratios were 10%, 20% and 30% rice straw pulp and 90%, 80% and 70% recycled duplex.10% rice straw pulp gave better results more than 20% and 30% in the blended paperboard .In addition coating with the three local pigments, ground calcium carbonate , titanium dioxide and kaolin on one surface of paperboard was applied and investigated.Commercial resin was also used to coat paperboard surface and compared with the local pigments. These tow treatments namely blending and coating for rice straw pulp gained paperboard with good mechanical properties in both machine direction and cross direction.