Sustainable utilization of calcined sugarcane mud waste as nanofiller for fine paper production

Improving paper characteristics through natural and cost-effective fillers is a massive issue in the paper industry. In the process of manufacturing paper, inorganic and organic fillers are utilized. Organic fillers are only appropriate for specific applications, and their expensive cost has limited their use. Here, various concentrations of sugarcane press mud (SPM) waste were applied to obtain pure calcium oxide nanoparticles (CaONPs) after the calcination to use as a potential filler in the papermaking by mixing the CaONPs at various ratios (5, 10, 15, and 20%), and paper properties have been investigated. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM), selected area electron diffraction (SAED), scanning electron microscope (SEM), and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) were utilized to characterize the CaONPs produced. The finding reveals that the influence of nano CaO fillers filled at different ratios (5, 10, 15, and 20%) on tensile, tear index, porosity, and smoothness was slowly decreased when increasing the content of nano filler to 35.9, 55.0, 565.7, and 260.3 at (0%) decrease to 30.7, 42.4, 381.6, and 188.4 at (20%), respectively. Also, opacity and brightness were increased from 93.0 and 71.7 at (0%) to 99.0 and 72.3 at (20%), respectively. The previous results revealed that the CaONPs at (20%) represent the optimal owing to the small particle size of CaONPs is satisfactory for provoking the prosperities of paper.