Optimisation of bleaching time and H₂O₂ concentration of handmade paper from Areca catechu L. fibre

Areca nut (Areca catechu L.) is a type of palm used for commercial purposes because all parts of the plant -have high economic value. Areca nut fibre contains 53.2% cellulose and therefore, it can potentially be used as raw material for pulp for paper craft. Bleaching is conducted in order to make colourful paper craft. Some factors to be taken into account while bleaching the paper craft are levels of chemicals used for bleaching and length of bleaching time. The purpose of this study was to determine H₂O₂ level and optimum bleaching time to create quality paper from areca fibres and cardboard paper. Quality of the paper was evaluated based on tensile strength, thickness, grammage and brightness. Response surface method (RSM) is implemented optimize the estimated response. The model used in RSM is CCD (Central Design Composite) with 2 factors, namely bleaching time and H₂O₂. The upper and lower limit for the first factor were 90 and 150 minutes consecutively. Those for the second factor were 5% and 15% respectively. The evaluate responses were tensile strength and brightness level. The findings showed that the most suitable combination was 150-minutes bleaching time and 15% H₂O₂. The combination resulted in 69.50% brightness and 14.71 kN/m² tensile strength. In addition, the paper grammage was 282 gr/cm², its thickness was 0.88 mm and the moisture content was 6.5.