A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Pulp and Paper Technology

Thesis (M. Sc.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 2011

In this study, Bagasse and Bamboo pulp were used as raw material to substitute wood pulp in top-ply linerboard. The effect of refining revolutions on freeness of pulp was studied to find the optimum refining point. Moreover to study the effect on printing quality, internal sizing was required. The surface properties, strength properties and print quality were main topics for investigation. For non-wood pulp, the refining energy which was used to receive the suitable freeness to form the sheets was more than twice lower than for wood pulp. One of refining side-effect is fines generation. Non-wood especially bamboo creates significant amount of fines. Alum and rosin were used to be internal sizing chemical to improve water resistance of top-ply linerboard. Adding Bamboo pulp resulted in less effective internal sizing, high Cobb value but adding Bagasse pulp gave more effective internal sizing than Bamboo pulp and the Cobb value was the same as for the wood pulp. At high degree of replacement, using non-wood pulp to substitute wood pulp raw material in top-ply linerboard resulted in surface properties improvement, strength improvement (except tear resistance and bending resistance) and in good printing quality (high ink density and good ink rub resistance). However, one of printing quality parameters which is ink gloss has not shown good result when using bamboo pulp.