A development of pulp pressing-separating machine from pineapple leaf

Abstract

Normally, bast fibres were removed from pineapple web by wrapping the boiled pineapple leaf with nylon web and stamp on it. If using this method, it will take 24 hours to stamp on 40 kilograms of boiled leaf in order to obtain clean pineapple web that is suitable for producing paper. Apart from that, when pressing the fiber, we need to get rid of the water as much as we can because the fiber will be weight before using to produce paper. If the water pressed out each time is not equal, there may be an error about paper thickness. Moreover, stamping on boiled leaf may be dangerous because the chemical substance used when boiling the leaf may burn the feet and cause wound. Currently, there is a Pressing machine to separate water from pineapple fiber, Rachadasak Supengcum, 2010 to fix the problems mentioned above. However, there is a weak point because the pressing tube is small, so it can press only 1 kilogram of leaf per one time. Therefore, the new machine is designed to have a pressing tube, sized 30 centimeters wide and 30 centimeters long. The pressing period is 30 centimeters and the pressure for pressing is 70 bars. It takes 1 minute 15 second for one squeeze which contains 6 kilograms of pineapple leaf. It can decrease the time for pressing from the old machine by 6 times. In addition, the machine is designed to have the open-close channel to bring the pressed fiber out from the machine more easily. According to the experiment to remove the bast fibres from pineapple web, the most appropriate amount for each pressing is 6 kilograms. The pressing process takes 1 minute 15 second. The remaining pineapple web after the pressing is 3 kilograms