PAPER

India’s per capita consumption of paper is around 4.00 Kg.. With the expected increase in literacy rate and growth economy, an increase in per capita consumption of paper is expected. The demand for upstream market of paper products like, tissue paper, tea bags, filter paper, lightweight online-coated paper, medical grade coated paper etc., is growing up. Due to this tremendous increase in use of paper, 1600 m³ papers are wasted in India per day. Even though the waste papers are recycled in paper industry only 29% of waste paper is recycled. It is low in comparison to the global average of 36%. It is the major waste in India. So only the paper was selected as an important material in this project. The following are the properties of the  paper, which was used in this project.

Chemistry

          Paper is principally wood cellulose, which is considered as fibrous material. Cellulose is the second most abundant material on earth after rock. It is the main component of plant cell walls, and the basic building block for many textile and for paper. Cellulose is a natural polymer, a long chain of linked sugar molecules made by the linking of smaller molecules. Fig shows the cellulose hydrogen bonds.

Cellulose hydrogen bonds

The links in the cellulose chain a type of sugar, ß-D glucose. The cellulose chain bristles with polar –OH groups. These groups form many hydrogen bonds with –OH groups on adjacent chains, bundling the chain together. The chains also pack regularly in places to form hard, stable, crystalline regions that give the bundled chains even more stability and strength.

 Microscopic view of cellulose

Fig  shows the microscopic view of cellulose structure. It shows the network of cellulose fibres and smaller offshoots from the fibres called fibrils.

Physical behaviour

          Even though the chemical behaviour of the paper is suitable for papercrete, the physical behaviour of the paper is also taking effect in the physical behaviour of papercrete. The tensile strength of the paper also seems to be sufficient for the task. When applying a pull on a single sheet of paper on its edges, it has a great strength. Ripping a piece of paper is much easier than pulling it part. So it denotes the shear strength of paper is not as great as its tensile strength. But, when ripping the hundreds of paper it is not an easy task. So, it shows that it has more shear strength.