The residual parts of Tobacco plant after the harvesting of leaves were recently produced from 120 to 150 thousand-tons per year in Japan. As a new source for pulp and papermaking, the utilization of those material has been investigated.
The waste rods from a Japanese native Tobacco plant were approximately consisted of the following ratio of tissue as 12% of root, 64% of wood part of stem, 16% of bast part of stem and 8% of pith. The tissues of dry stem and root observed microscopically are shown in Fig. 14. The ratio of tissue elements on the cross-section of wood part of stem was generally 10% of vessel, 19% of ray tissue and 71% of wood fiber. The xylem of root was almost similar to that of stem.
The various cells in pulp obtained from each part of Tobacco plant are shown in Fig. 5, and those dimensions are summarized in Table 2. The main cell forming the Tobacco pulp was slightly fine and thin-walled fiber as compared with the common hardwood fiber. The characteristic cells such as the thick-walled bast fiber and the spherical pith cell were considerably contained in Tobacco pulp.
Chemical analyses on the whole Tobacco stem and the only wood part of stein were carried out according to the ordinary method of wood analysis. The data in Table 4 showed that the whole stem was very rich in ash, hot water extract and 1% NaOH extract, but the wood part of stein had roughly the similar composition to the common hardwood except that the Tobacco xylem abounded in pectin.
It is concluded that the waste rod of Tobacco plant has some distinctive feature on fiber and composition and can be possibly utilized as a source matter for papermaking pulp.
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