Papermaking essays

Papermaking essays In order for a tree to be converted into the sheet of paper, like the one you are reading this essay on, it must go through many processes before the consumer receives the final product. Selected trees, which range from twenty to forty feet, are harvested with all of the tops and branches left in the woods. The logs are then transported to the mill on special trucks called, ironically enough, logging trucks. These trucks can carry up to fifty logs at once. When the truck enters the mill it is directed to an area where the logs will be unloaded with a crane with a special scissor attachment. This crane can remove all fifty logs at one time, its that big. This same crane is also utilized to transport the logs to a big blue building called the Wood Room. In the Wood Room, the logs will be de-barked and reduced to wood chips the size of a dollar bill. The wood chips are then sent to another building called the Pulp Mill via a conveyor system. In the Pulp Mill a very caustic solution is added to the wood chips where they will be cooked and reduced to light brown fiber slurry, about the color of a grocery bag. The slurry is then piped to another building called the Bleach Plant. At the Bleach plant the slurry is treated with a chlorine product one hundred times stronger than normal household bleach. Even with such a potent process, the slurry must still be treated yet again before it can become white enough for common copy paper. This process happens in an area of the Paper Mill called the Beater Room or Color Room. Both names refer to the same area for good reason. The slurry is then colored white, or any other color for that reason. After all of the coloring other special additives such as starch, salt, and calcium carbonate, which keeps ink from bleeding through a sheet of paper. The slurry is then beaten or mixed with water in huge vats, which can hold up to four thousand gallon ...