EXPERIMENTAL STUDY ON THE CLEANING OF FOXING SPOTS ON THE OLD PAPER MANUSCRIPTS USING NATURAL PRODUCTS.

Many manuscripts and historical books contain a form of deterioration known as foxing or fox spots, a brownish stain which has the effect of altering aesthetic and visual appeal The aim of this work is to study the role of the extracts of Water Cantaloupe (CE) and Water melon (WE) separately as natural products in removing foxing spots in various modern and old papers. Old papers and three types of modern papers made from cotton, linen and a mixture of cotton, linen and wood (1:1:1) were used fo r this purpose. Each type was divided into two groups, one of them was infected with foxing and the other was left as control (uninfected). Infected papers were treated with CE, WE and 2% sodium hypochlorite (as a traditional chemical bleaching) separately. Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FT1R), Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy, Scanning Electron Microscopy equipped with Energy-Dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDX) in addition to some optical and mechanical properties were carried out to evaluate the Cantaloupe Extracts (CE) and Water Melon Extracts (WE) use in removing foxing stains compared to sodium hypochlorite. The results showed that CE removed foxing in different studied papers at pH = 7.4. In contrast, WE could not remove these foxing at any studied pH values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]