Utilization of corn husk for tissue papermaking.

The demand of tissue papers is increasing with the population increase. This will definitely increase the need of wood fibers as the main raw material. However, due to the wood shortages, there have been many attempts to use non- wood fibers as substitutes for papermaking. In Indonesia, corn production has gradually increased for the last 5 years, hence it also has an impact on the raising in the amount of corn husk waste. Corn husk has a high cellulose content which suitable to be used as a raw material for tissue papermaking. In this experiment, soda pulping process was conducted to remove out lignin. The resulting tissue paper will be added with additives that have antimicrobial properties of chitosan and mangosteen peel for the purpose of increasing the tensile strength or absorption of water. The aim of this research is to study the effect of depending variables (temperature and NaOH concentration) on chemical composition (cellulose and lignin content), and physical properties including water absorption and tensile strength.The research was started with the initial process of removing the lignin content in the pulp by pretreating delignification using the sodium hydroxide (NaOH) process with several variations in concentration (4–10%), and temperature (60–90°C) for 1.5 hours. To obtain tissue with a good physical condition, it has been influenced by the optimum chemical composition containing high cellulose and low lignin content, high tensile strength and water absorption. The optimum conditions for tissue paper in this study were at 90°C and 4% of NaOH concentration. The next step will be to vary the composition of the additive in order to obtain the effect of physical properties (tensile strength and water absorption). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]