Innovative Ozone/Oxygen Reactive Flotation for Paper Deinking

摘要

To improve paper recycling, the potential of an innovative deinking process using a reactive ozone/oxygen gas mixture instead of air was studied on two recovered paper furnishes (offset print and newsprint/magazine mixture). Using suitable O3 concentrations, ink removal, following first-order kinetics, increased and losses dropped leading to better selectivity than using air alone. The ozone benefits in term of selectivity depended on temperature and paper furnishes and reached 100 for newsprint/magazine furnish at ambient temperature. Finally deinking effluent COD was significantly reduced and the ozone-based flotation allowed the reduction of the alkaline chemistry used before flotation.