Epson Small Recycled Paper Maker Expected to Be Formally Sold in Autumn

[China Packaging Network News] In 2015, the world's paper production exceeded 400 million tons, and each ton of paper requires four trees with an average age of 20 years. Based on this calculation, about 1.6 billion trees disappear from the earth every year because they make paper.

Papermaking is also very costly for water resources. To calculate 200 tons of water per ton of paper, the paper industry uses nearly 80 billion tons of water a year.

So, is there a kind of papermaking that can cut down trees and achieve zero water consumption?

This point, Japan's Epson has already done it. The Japanese company, which specializes in digital imaging, launched PaperLab, a small-sized recycled paper maker, in 2015. It is expected to be sold to the market in the autumn of 2017 after it was commercialized at the end of last year.

Using waste paper as raw material, this 2.6 meter long, 1.2 meter wide, and 1.8 meter high machine can produce 14 sheets of A4 size recycled paper in one minute. The output of 6,720 pieces in 8 hours can basically meet the paper demand of medium-sized enterprises in general.

PaperLab uses dry paper technology developed by Epson. In 2016, it won the Nikkei Earth Environment Technology Award organized by the Nikkei Shimbun.

Figure Paper Process Schematic

The process of dry papermaking can be summarized as: "waste paper-fibration-bonding-forming-recycled paper". Through mechanical treatment, waste paper is converted into cotton-like, slender fibers, and PaperLab uses different adhesives to bind the fibers together according to the paper application and press-mold them. From the input of waste paper to the production of recycled paper, the entire papermaking process takes only 3 minutes. Only a small amount of water needs to be added during the papermaking process to maintain the environmental humidity inside the machine.

In addition, the user can also change the characteristics of the paper by adding brighteners, dyes and other additives to make personalized paper.

According to Epson's calculations, the cost of producing an ordinary A4 copy paper is approximately 0.45 yen (approximately RMB 3 cents), and the color A4 copy paper is approximately 1.3 yen (approximately 8 cents). The manufacturing cost for thicker A4 size paper is around 7 yen (approximately 0.4 yuan), which is about 80% of the lowest price in the paper market.