Production of Tea Bag Paper from Corn Stalk Pulp

Corn is the third most important crop in the world. It is a short-lived crop, after corn ears are harvested, its stalk will be landfilled or destroyed by burning in order to prepare soil for next plantation. Apart from burning, landfilling, or making bio-compost, corn stalk could be produced into pulp for papermaking. This research was aimed to find the optimal condition for production of tea bags from corn stalk pulp and to compare physical & mechanical properties between corn stalk tea bag and commercial tea bag. The experiment was done by cooking corn stalk in opened soda pulping process. The produced corn stalk pulp was refined for 30 and 60 seconds to form two types of 23.5±0.02 gram. corn stalk paper. Then physical, mechanical properties and morphology of the corn stalk papers together with their performance between
commercial tea bag and tea bag from corn stalk paper were analyzed. The result showed that the optimal condition to produce corn stalk pulp was to use sodium hydroxide concentration of 18% on O.D.wt., at 100±5 ºC for 150 minutes. The pulp yield was 21.7%. The comparison results of physical properties between commercial tea bag and tea bag produced from corn stalk pulp revealed that the basic weight of both papers were similar. Corn stalk pulp paper had lower thickness than commercial tea bag paper. For mechanical properties, the data showed that corn stalk pulp paper had lower tensile strength than commercial tea bag. For the morphology of corn stalk pulp paper, it showed that fiber formation and air permeability of corn stalk pulp paper was similar to commercial tea bag paper. When compared the performance between commercial tea bag and tea bag of corn stalk pulp paper, there was not much different between the two types of paper.