Introducing deinked old newsprint as a new resource of electrical purposes paper

Finding new uses for recycled paper (a cellulose rich raw material), and increasing the rate of recycling is beneficial to the environmental efficiency of the whole paper industry. The present work introduces, for the first time, deinked recycled old newsprint as a new resource of electrical purposes paper. Impregnation of recycled deinked old newsprint paper, by linseed oil, enhances the breaking length of paper and remarkably improves its electrical properties i.e., the dielectric constant increases greatly and the a.c. conductivity decreases significantly due to impregnation. It was found that the electrical properties of deinked recycled old newsprint paper and its linseed oil impregnated counterpart, are close to the electrical properties of paper made from the more expensive virgin wood pulps and their linseed oil impregnated counterparts. In a series of research articles, the authors and others threw light for the first time on the electrical properties of paper made from agricultural residues pulps, and their linseed oil impregnated counterparts. Some, of the investigated agricultural residues papers, showed electrical properties close to wood papers, or even superior to it. This motivated the authors to expand the studies, on electrical properties of paper, to other cheap and abundant raw materials. Recycled old newsprint is an abundant raw material that is cheaper than virgin wood pulps. Therefore, recycled deinked old newsprint paper was chosen as a new raw material to study its electrical properties in this work. The effect of elevated temperatures on the electrical properties of paper is, also, studied. It is shown that improvement in electrical properties, due to impregnation, is sustained at elevated temperatures. Impregnated deinked recycled old newsprint paper produced in this work finds its use as specialty electrical purposes paper. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.