Disadvantages and deficiencies of stone paper

1 The problem of non-renewable raw materials. The main raw material used is calcium carbonate. Although the natural reserve is huge, it is a non-renewable resource after all. Another raw material for stone paper is about 25% of synthetic resin. The synthetic resin comes from petroleum. It takes 3 tons of petroleum to synthesize 1 ton of resin. Petroleum is a precious energy resource with limited reserves and non-renewable. The plant fibers used in traditional papermaking can be crop stalks, reeds, fast-growing and high-yield forests, etc. The straws are crop waste for reuse, and reeds are herbaceous plants that can grow endlessly, and fast-growing and high-yielding forests. For example, poplars and eucalyptus are economic forests, and their planting, maintenance, and felling have been gradually commercialized and marketized. As long as a virtuous cycle of planting, maintenance, felling, and replanting is formed in a reasonable manner, it will hardly cause significant environmental impact. Therefore, from the viewpoint of sustainable development, stone-based paper cannot completely replace traditional paper.

2 Recycling and utilization of waste paper. Traditional plant fiber paper can be recycled. This kind of high-filled stone paper is more difficult to recycle than ordinary plastic film. The combustion method is usually adopted. Because the calorific value of the stone paper is low, the recovery value of the stone paper is also very low. During the combustion process, toxic components are released and the atmospheric environment is affected. If this kind of waste stone paper is mixed with traditional waste paper, the waste paper processing system of the existing paper mill will treat it as an indissociable plastic film and remove it as a mixed substance, which will cause economic losses to the paper mill. It also increases the difficulty of disposing of this waste.

3 Limitations of production technology. In terms of production technology, the thickness of stone paper products is difficult to reach a thinner level, and the quantitative, thickness deviation and stability of the product may be worse than that of plant fiber paper; its plasticity and easy deformation make it difficult to adapt to large widths and high speeds. The production of paper machines, therefore, its large-width products are still blank, and they are only limited to the conventional small-format ranges of Al, A2, A3, and A4.