Characteristic of flotation deinking using bio and synthetic surfactant at different air flow rate

Flotation deinking has industrially applied but several problems keep unsolved because limitations have to compete with several variables present. Flotation deinking is multi variables process, so studying flotation deinking is still interesting. In this research, the amount of variables was reduced and focused to the performance comparison between flotation deinking of old newspaper (ONP) using biodegradable fatty acid of morinda citrifolia as the raw bio surfactant (RBS) and biodegradable fatty acid of palm oil that had been converted to be commercial surfactant (CS). The flotation was done at laboratory flotation cell equipped with orifice at different diameter (orifice number 20, 40 and 60) with adjustable airflow rate. Brightness and Effective Residual Ink Concentration (ERIC) of the deinked pulp were measured. The best results were achieved on orifice number 40 with the highest brightness of 41.96 °ISO and 40.96 °ISO when using CS and RBS respectively, and lowest ERIC of 896.82 ppm and 1001.72 ppm when using CS and RBS respectively. The percentage delta of deinking power characteristic between CS and RBS was 2.36% and 11.70% for brightness and ERIC, respectively.