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INGEDE ... Digital Print Deinking – Overview

... @ drupa 2012

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INGEDE Met hods Print ing digit ally has many advantages such as reducing overprint, accuracy, no storage costs and
many more.
Recyclabilit y
But some digit al print ing processes also have disadvant ages compared to conventional offset
Digit al Print Deinking and gravure printing: They lack good deinkability in the paper mill. Even small amounts of these
undeinkable prints can have a big effect in the mixture that a paper mill processes every day.
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INGEDE tries to inform all members of the paper chain about these problems. INGEDE also tries to
Event s cooperate with printer manufacturers to provide them with the necessary background in order to
contribute to the development of better deinkable printed products. INGEDE also frequently
Press Releases participates in conferences, organizes seminars and has set up the Digital Round Table as a
constructive cooperation.
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INGEDE Act ions in digital print deinking
Members Only
Publicat ions dealing with digital print deinking

Digit al Round Table dealing with digital print deinking

How it began: INGEDE/CTP Workshop in 2001

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Paper recycling and deinking: The basic f act s are simple

Deinking is the key process in paper recycling. Hydrophobic (water-repellent) ink particles are
separated from hydrophilic (water-wettable) fibers. This process has been developed for offset and
gravure inks which are roughly more than 95 % in the current recovered paper mixture.

Different printing processes can neither be sorted apart manually than automatically. This is what
happens with the household collection: Board, plastic, dirt and other impurities and unwanted papers
are removed.

In the paper mill, the sorted recovered paper is dissolved in water in a long drum or in a pulper.
Screens separate large contaminants. During the pulping, chemicals like caustic soda (NaOH) and
soap are added to make the fibres swell and support detachment of ink particles.

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During the flotation process, air is blown throw the mixture of about 1 % fibres and 99 % water. The
bubbles take hydrophobic (water-repellent) ink particles with them and bring them to the surface
where they are skimmed off. This is repeated in several consecutive steps to remove as many ink
particles as possible, achieving the desired brightness.

Current waterbased inks create problems as they cannot be removed in this process and accumulate
in the system. Closing the water-loops is the major environmental achievement of the paper
industrie in the last two decades, at least in Europe. Here dyes and ink particles too small to be
removed have no other exit than the fibers: They stain them just as red socks dye the underwear in
the washing machine. This is not only the case for inkjet inks but also for undeinkable flexo inks that
the paper mills have been struggling for more than 20 years.

Solut ion f or inkjet : t o creat e a precipit at ion

One way to solve this problem has already been demonstrated by HP: The Web Press which was
presented at drupa 2008 used an experimental ink system where a ‘bonding agent’ led to a
precipitation of a special pigmented ink on to of the paper fiber network rather than bleeding into it.
The windfall profit is perfect deinkability. As it looks now, only pigmented inks provide the chance for
a solution that matches the deinking process, for dyes this is improbable. Unfortunately, the samples
presented at drupa 2008 were only experimental and the bonding agent technology offered now is
not deinkable. HP also looks at other ways to improve the deinkability. Other ink and inkjet suppliers
in the meantime have developed better deinkable inks. More ...

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 Current inkjet: Even small amount s can creat e problems. It is
unlikely that e. g. waterbased inkjet printed newspaper will be evenly
distributed among the total paper collection, so mere percentages are
irrelevant. If only one neighbourhood is supplied with an inkjet printed
newspaper, the household collection from here will not only be
useless for recycling but a significant problem if it mixes with other,
originally deinkable paper. The same would be true for a high-volume
transpromo mailing. Already the paper industry
has problems with a variety of small
contaminations, e. g. from SOHO inkjet printers,
leading to a rising background of brightness
problems in the mills.

Left: Sample of an waterbased inkjet printed

newspaper from drupa 2008 with one drop of
water

Right: Inkjet prints lare like a sponge full of ink – they bleed into the circulation
water of the paper mill (click pictures to enlarge)

Recent developments comfirm that it is possible to develop inkjet printing systems that are good
deinkable (see below).

For completely different reasons, current liquid t oner (Indigo) prints fail to pass INGEDE's
deinkability test. They leave large, visible dirt specks (photo composition showing the size of the
specks below) resulting from the very flexible ink film that peels off the paper. In general, in a mill it
requires additional energy and leads to significant fiber losses to reduce the number of dirt specks
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coming into the recycling process from various sources. INGEDE discusses this with HP.

Too many dirt specks f rom liquid t oner — severe damage at German paper mill

In August 2010, for the first time liquid t oner print s caused signif icant damage in a German paper
mill. More than 140 tons of new paper had to be dumped after overprint from a photo book printer
had gotten into the raw material of Europe's most sophist icat ed deinking paper mill, operating a
two-loop flotation plant with two dispergers at high energy input to produce premium quality
recycled paper. By accident, t his mill t rial proved t hat liquid t oner print s cannot be deinked even
in the best plants, they should be kept out of recovered paper for deinking and directed only
towards board production. Read the full story here.

HP's t rial wit h Greenf ield mill is no example f or ot her mills

In late 2011, HP published results of a deinking t rial wit h Arjowiggins' Chat eau Thierry Greenf ield
mill. This mill was able to process a mixture containing 5 % of Indigo prints (coverage and other
details were not released). Due to the fact that this mill produces a special pulp with very high
brightness, using special equipment and accepting high losses, this mill is unique and in no way an
example for the European paper industry. On the contrary, this trial confirms that Indigo prints can
only be deinked under very special process conditions that are neither ecological nor economical for
a standard deinking plant.

Dry t oners for about 20 years have been good deinkable at least for production size printers. It
was just the old slow SOHO printers which, at low speeds, literally ironed the toner resin into the
fiber network, attaching pigment particles firmly to the fibers from which they were difficult to
remove. This has improved dramatically with the speed of the printers. And the output of today’s dry
toner production printers is mostly even better deinkable than offset newspapers.

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After HP at drupa 2008 had claimed liquid toner to be as good deinkable as dry toners, INGEDE ran
additional tests with the same test file on paper from the same reel showing that this is not the case
(see also INGEDE Press Release).

This chart shows the results of a comparative deinking study: The number of specks found
according to INGEDE Method 11 is much higher for liquid toner than for dry toner samples – no
matter which lab pulper used.

INGEDE Met hod 11 has been developed to compare the deinkability of different printed products
and to rate the challenge a printed product means to a standard deinking plant . It simulates the two
important steps of deinking – detachment of the ink from the fibers and ink removal from the
system. It does not simulate the full process in a deinking plant. This would not make sense as a
deinking plant includes several steps to cope with present impurities such as a disperser to reduce
dirt specks. The presence of these units cannot be taken as an excuse to challenge them so they
cannot be included into the evaluation of the deinkability of a print product.

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Co p yrig ht 20 12 ING EDE Pub lic Re latio ns , Axe l Fis c he r.

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