{"id":137430,"date":"2024-01-19T07:23:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-19T06:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=137430"},"modified":"2024-01-11T14:29:03","modified_gmt":"2024-01-11T13:29:03","slug":"making-paper-from-grass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/making-paper-from-grass\/","title":{"rendered":"Making paper from grass"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
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\u2018This saves trees in Scandinavia as well as removing the need to transport pulp or paper to the Netherlands.\u2019\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

There is a pleasant grassy smell in the test room of ACCRES in Lelystad, WUR\u2019s trial and development location for sustainable energy and green raw materials. With a sweeping gesture, Kimberly Wevers, researcher at Wageningen Plant Research, chucks armfuls of verge grass onto a conveyor belt. A camera that has been trained using 15,000 photos carries out a rapid scan for foreign objects such as cans or agricultural plastic. \u2018We even found a pair of underpants once,\u2019 says the biotechnologist. The objects are discarded through a hole in the conveyor belt system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The raw grass is deposited in a cage and taken to a specially developed digester where a culture of microorganisms is sprayed on from a shower head. \u2018The bacteria convert the sugars into biogas, which we can use for refining the grass further,\u2019 explains Wevers.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The grass then undergoes a series of additional treatments, such as washing, an alkaline bath, and drying and cutting in a screw press and a second-hand mincer. The researcher shows the final result: snippets of fibrous material that is clean and devoid of sand grains. \u2018These smaller fibres link together nicely during the paper-making process,\u2019 says Wevers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now that four years of Wageningen research have shown grass to be a viable raw material, the Schut paper factory in Heelsum, the oldest in the Netherlands, is set to start producing paper from verge grass next year. Wevers shows business cards, greetings cards and artists\u2019 paper made by Schut using materials other than wood fibre. \u2018Schut has a great deal of experience making paper with fibres from cocoa shells or even worn-out jeans.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n

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Such special paper for niche markets will soon be among the possibilities, says Wevers, as will packaging material such as cardboard, egg boxes or tomato trays. But grass paper won\u2019t be coming out of the laser printer any time soon. \u2018The technical specifications for that are too demanding at present.\u2019 Anyway, the market for cardboard products has better prospects: we are printing less and less, but we are ordering ever more packages online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grass with added value<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The research in Lelystad is part of the GO-GRASS EU project. The EU programme Horizon 2020 funded four demo projects as part of GO-GRASS, aiming to develop \u2018grass-based circular business models for rural areas\u2019 in four countries. More than a fifth of the surface area in Europe is grassland and the idea is to see if that grass can have value as something other than just cattle feed.<\/p>\n\n\n

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In Denmark, researchers are exploring methods for extracting proteins from young grass. \u2018Denmark has a lot of pigs, which mainly eat soya as they have difficulty digesting grass,\u2019 says Wevers. If the Danish pigs were able to consume the grass protein, it would reduce soya imports. In Germany, researchers are turning grass into a kind of charcoal \u2013 biochar \u2013 that can be used to enrich marginal soils with carbon. And in Sweden, researchers are using the grass as litter for stables. All four projects have been a success, says Wevers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tough and woody<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The Dutch grass paper and cardboard are made from grass from verges and nature areas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2018This grass is mown once or maybe twice a year at most, so it\u2019s tough and woody and doesn\u2019t contain much protein,\u2019 explains Kimberly Wever<\/strong>s. \u2018Verge grass in particular has a negative economic value as it costs money to get rid of it. The Directorate-General for Public Works and the provincial authorities are required to remove it and turn it into compost. Or they leave it lying there. But that is exactly the kind of grass we want. The woodier the better \u2013 the tougher the paper. There isn\u2019t enough grass in the Netherlands to satisfy the entire demand for paper, but it\u2019s suitable for niche markets.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When asked whether the contamination of verge grass with substances from exhaust gases and the rubber particles in car tyres is a problem, Wevers<\/strong> replies: \u2018It turns out they mainly end up in the first metre of the verge next to the asphalt. The Public Works directorate can designate the cleanest sections of verge for our raw materials. But the scope of our study didn\u2019t include traffic pollution.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

By turning the verge grass and \u2013 much cleaner \u2013 grass from nature areas into paper fibres, the grass acquires a positive commercial value and contributes to the regional economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Wevers, this could become a new business model for composting companies. They already process a lot of grass clippings from the region and they could therefore also turn the grass into fibres for paper applications. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2018This saves trees in Scandinavia as well as removing the need to transport pulp or paper to the Netherlands,\u2019 she says, summing up the benefits. A broad lifecycle analysis shows that \u2018grass-based pulp\u2019 scores better from an environmental perspective than conventional wood pulp. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wevers:<\/strong> \u2018It is better in terms of both water consumption and energy consumption. The latter benefit is mainly because we first extract biogas from the grass, which we then use in the production process.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018This saves trees in Scandinavia as well as removing the need to transport pulp or paper to the Netherlands.\u2019\u00a0 There is a pleasant grassy smell in the test room of ACCRES in Lelystad, WUR\u2019s trial and development location for sustainable energy and green raw materials. With a sweeping gesture, Kimberly Wevers, researcher at Wageningen Plant […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","nova_meta_subtitle":"Wageningen researchers are turning worthless grass from verges and nature areas into the raw material for paper and cardboard. That could give a boost to the local economy","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[5838,14811,22308,11877,7105,13222],"supplier":[7768,100],"class_list":["post-137430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-bioeconomy","tag-cardboard","tag-grass","tag-naturalfibres","tag-packaging","tag-paper","supplier-horizon-2020","supplier-universitaet-wageningen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137430\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137430"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=137430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}