INFLUENCE OF RAW MATERIAL CHARACTERISTICS ON THE PULP MOLDING PROCESS

Due to the negative impact of fossil-based, plastic packaging on the environment and the demand for sustainability, the molded pulp industry has been growing tremendously in recent years. The sustainable qualities of these packaging materials, as well as certain government regulations and the growing customer demands for a more 'green packaging', is making companies eager to find suitable alternatives to those currently used oil-based forms of packaging. Molded pulp packaging is produced from biodegradable lignocellulosic fibers like wood-based fibers, hemp fibers or other fibrous materials, therefore, it became focus of research and gained importance in industrial applications. Although molded pulp packaging is a rather old technology, as it has been around for over a hundred years now, scientific understanding of the whole process and the needed material properties is incomplete. Here, an overview of the different production procedures will be given. Furthermore, first results of measurements obtained for the so-called thermoforming process will be presented. The goal of this work was to emphasize the importance of understanding the characteristics of the used raw materials in order to optimize the molding process. For this reason, different types of fibrous materials, which are already being used in pulp molding processes and their characteristics, like the lignin content, fiber length distribution, ash content and drainage level, have been compared.