What
is Cellulose?
-Cellulose, (C6H10O5)n,
is an organic compound.
-It is also known as complex
carbohydrates.
-It’s a polysaccharide
composed of many B linked D-glucose units.
Where
to Find Cellulose?
-Cellulose makes up plant’s
cell wall.
-Plants can conduct
photosynthesis to produce glucose and use it as a food source or link many
glucose monomers to form cellulose.
-Average percentage of
cellulose in plants is 33%. It may differ in the type of plants. As an example,
cotton is made up of 90% cellulose whereas wood is made up of 40-50% cellulose.
-It’s the most common and
abundant organic compound on Earth.
Characteristics
of Cellulose
-Cellulose is insoluble in
water and also hard to break down.
-This is due to the
arrangement of the glucose monomers that make up cellulose.
-Glucose monomers in
cellulose produce linear polymer chains that can align side by side. Hydrogen
bonds are formed between these chains, thus producing a rigid structure of
layered sheets of cellulose. This inflexible chemical structure gives cellulose
its strength and also makes it insoluble in water.
Uses
of Cellulose
-Cellulose is indigestible
by the digestion system of most animals including humans.
-For humans, cellulose acts
as dietary fibre which aids in faeces excretion.
-Ruminants, termites, and a
small number of other animals can digest cellulose with the help of symbiotic
microorganisms that live in their digestive track. These symbiotic
microorganisms secrete enzymes to break down cellulose into its glucose
monomers.
-Besides that, cellulose can
be used to make varieties of industrial products including the very common
paper we use almost everyday.
Cellulose
in Paper Making
-As cellulose is insoluble
in water, it is easy to separate it from other constituent of a plant.
-As early as A.D.100, the
Chinese have already discovered the use of cellulose to produce papers.
-Woodchips obtain from trees
are grinded and washed, bleached. After that, the wood pulp is poured over a
vibrating mesh that filters out the water and other unwanted constituent of a
plant. When water is drained away, what remain are the fibres (cellulose) that
are the primary ‘ingredients’ of a paper.
Why
Make Papers with Cellulose?
-It is comparably cheap.
-Most abundant source of
fibres, easy to obtain.
-Easy to process with its
insoluble in water characteristics.
Elephant
Dung and Cellulose
-As elephants eat mainly
plants, their waste is largely cellulose.
-Like most animals,
elephants can only digest cellulose to a certain extend and most of the
cellulose are excreted.
Why
Elephant Dung?
-Traditional wood-pulp
papers are mainly made up of cellulose.
-Making papers with
elephant’s high-cellulose poop is possible.
-An elephant eat around
200-250kg of food and excretes around 50kg of dung per day.
-Elephants are poor
digesters. More than 50% of what they eat (bamboo, grass, tree, shrubs) are excreted
as ‘fibre pulp’.
-An elephant provide enough
dung to make 115 papers a day.
-All handmade papers are made
from fibrous materials, which is boiled and beaten to make the fibre pulp.
However, the elephants have already completed the pulping process. They provide
the fibres needed for paper making.
-Elephant dung does not have
very foul smell unless they are sick. Therefore, the papers made out of it do
not smell even without the use of chemicals.
-Elephant dung is a waste
product. Turning them to paper contributes to environment care.
Elephant
Dung Paper Making Process
1.
Collect elephant dung.
2.
Wash dung.
3.
Boil for 5 hours to kill bacteria.
4.
Spin cut and colour the fibres.
5.
Make fibres into equal weight balls.
6.
Sift evenly into frames and remove water.
7.
Dry under the sun.
8.
Sanding the papers for a smoother surface.
9.
Cut the papers to size.
