I've also seen a glue-less paper binding trick where two pieces of paper are finely crimped together with some high pressure tool in alternating v^v^v^ patterns, actually making tiny tears in the paper. Does anyone know what kind of tool does that?
The problem with these staple-less staplers is that they permanently damage the paper. With a regular staple there are two tiny holes and that's it. You can bend open the staple to get back your individual sheets (e.g. to scan a particular page) and if you want to put them back together you can push the same staple or a fresh one back through the existing holes and bend it close.
You can repeat the process as many times as you want and there won't be any new damage to the paper. With a paperless stapler you would have to do new damage to the paper each time. Also, a regular staple is pretty much forever while these crimped folds can eventually come loose again.
“By irradiating the paper with a CO laser, we create refusible, sugar-like
reaction products that we use instead of the synthetic materials or adhesives
that would otherwise be required to seal the paper by the heat sealing
process. In this way, we are essentially producing our own adhesive"
Not my field by any means, but I think it's primarily to avoid adhesives that are difficult to handle during recycling.
Turning the paper molecules into simple sugars and using thosr as an adhesive is presumably beneficial because the sugars would easily dissolve in the water when the paper is recycled. Most other industrial adhesives as I understand it are hydrophobic, so aren't as easily removed.
Looks like using expensive technology to provide exactly the same effect that was provided by the cheap starch-based adhesives that were used for paper when I was a child.
I really hate the people who have thought that it is a good idea to replace the water-soluble starch-based adhesives that were used for labels on bottles when I was a child with modern adhesives that are insoluble in water and which are a huge PITA if you want to reuse a bottle and you want to remove the labels from it.
No expert but water-soluble adhesives like wheatpaste and such rely on the water getting absorbed or evaporated. In an industrial setting I guess that makes it too slow.
Also in an industrial setting I can see an advantage of eliminating an ingredient.
As for removing labels off bottles, I seem to recall my grandpa putting the bottles in a bucket of water and washing soda (sodium carbonate), and just letting them marinate for a good while. Wasn't super hard but a bit of a chore like you say.
But might it just be easier to develop and apply similar sugar adhesives, or other compatible or soluble adhesives (in quantities that will not affect the recycling process)?
OFC, if you never introduce anything new, it is easier to feel like it is a "pure" process. Yet, what says the heat treatment isn't actually creating new molecules that could be recycling-incompatible, even though they never "add" any new material?
I had the same thought, but there are two differences: the amount of these compounds (presumably low) and how they behave in recycling compared to current adhesives. Maybe they wash out, maybe they can accumulate to a large degree without making the recycled paper worse.
The article doesn't tell, unfortunately. Worst case, a cool technical article is the only thing the technology is good for...
“Maybe they wash out” … “The article doesn’t tell”
It seems like you are engaging in rather emotional response when you admit you’re just hoping and making things up.
That is not a very scientific basis. Are you biased towards this project or Fraunhofer by any chance, maybe just Germany in general?
I agree with all the legitimate criticisms, especially considering that it is very possible that what they’re actually doing is using the laser to essentially create a hydrocarbon based glue in situ from the primary material itself.
It is an interesting discovery and process in and of itself. I’m not sure why there seems to be this obsessive defensiveness of Fraunhofer in the comments here.
There could be several reasons, but the PRopaganda people on this are going about things rather ham-fisted. My guess is that there are specific “eco” type grant or funding requirements that need to push the idea that it’s reducing “carbon” or oil dependence and can do away with mean old, no good, totally awful plastics; and cannot just be honest because of that, because all of the environmental stuff is so frequently inherently dishonest and rather delusional even, because ironically, the money of funding and profit and going to market cause their own greed, just from a different angle.
A hidden little dirty secret in Germany in particular is that all these boutique niche solutions are really just greenwashed, statist “capitalism” rather than greenbackwashed, de facto statist “capitalism”.
They’re both just theft from the multitude to enrich the minority, just by different means.
Fraunhofer institutes are not bullshit factories, they are doing research partially funded by industry, and the companies funding them are generally not the bullshit-heavy types (i.e. megacorps). The megacorps do their research in-house.
That’s chemically not correct in and of itself, but I do wonder if through the process they are effectively creating a hydrocarbon by freeing the oxygen from the carbohydrate to create this magic non-adhesive adhesive.
Carbohydrates are oxidized hydrocarbons and hydrocarbons are reduced carbohydrates.
They can be and they are interconverted, both in living beings and in the industry.
In paper, most of the wood components except cellulose have been removed, so paper usually consists mostly of carbohydrates.
In general any adhesive is neither a hydrocarbon nor a carbohydrate, but a derivative of them. Natural adhesives are usually derived either from proteins, e.g. various kinds of animal glues, or from starch or from various kinds of gums or of resins or of latex.
Bitumen has been used as an adhesive that consists mostly of hydrocarbons, but it also includes some oxidized components that provide most of the adhesion, as pure hydrocarbons have lubricating properties, not adhesive properties.
Can you elaborate on this? My guess would be, that because of their status as a government backed research institute, they invent a lot, but let others do the commercialisation. So patent fees seem like a natural choice for them, to recover their investments.
Fraunhofer has a ton of top of the line innovations. I'm glad it exists. If the only way to exist is for them to collect on patents they've produced, I don't see the issue.
I'd gladly take every Fraunhofer "innovation" 5 years later if it meant Fraunhofer didn't exist. Compression patent extortionists are the scum of the earth.
What a cool read? I didn't expect lasers to be the answer. I use rubber bands all the time to hold paper wrap together. I thought the answer would be rubber bands or strings (analog version).
Close where I am living (Tuscany) there is a small industrial district focused on adesive paper production.
I had sent this link to a friend of mine that is working as plant manager for one of those.
I thought that this was going to be illustrations of the marvelous ways that the Japanese wrap and secure gifts without using any tape. When I was in Japan years ago I would tell them that a purchase was a gift just to see how they wrapped things. I might even still have something that I never unwrapped because the finished thing was a work of art in itself.
52 comments
It's a bit hard to search for, because they make one that punches a hole too (shows up in the video).
You can repeat the process as many times as you want and there won't be any new damage to the paper. With a paperless stapler you would have to do new damage to the paper each time. Also, a regular staple is pretty much forever while these crimped folds can eventually come loose again.
In US, you can find it on Amazon for 15-20 bucks.
Turning the paper molecules into simple sugars and using thosr as an adhesive is presumably beneficial because the sugars would easily dissolve in the water when the paper is recycled. Most other industrial adhesives as I understand it are hydrophobic, so aren't as easily removed.
I really hate the people who have thought that it is a good idea to replace the water-soluble starch-based adhesives that were used for labels on bottles when I was a child with modern adhesives that are insoluble in water and which are a huge PITA if you want to reuse a bottle and you want to remove the labels from it.
Also in an industrial setting I can see an advantage of eliminating an ingredient.
As for removing labels off bottles, I seem to recall my grandpa putting the bottles in a bucket of water and washing soda (sodium carbonate), and just letting them marinate for a good while. Wasn't super hard but a bit of a chore like you say.
But might it just be easier to develop and apply similar sugar adhesives, or other compatible or soluble adhesives (in quantities that will not affect the recycling process)?
OFC, if you never introduce anything new, it is easier to feel like it is a "pure" process. Yet, what says the heat treatment isn't actually creating new molecules that could be recycling-incompatible, even though they never "add" any new material?
The article doesn't tell, unfortunately. Worst case, a cool technical article is the only thing the technology is good for...
It seems like you are engaging in rather emotional response when you admit you’re just hoping and making things up.
That is not a very scientific basis. Are you biased towards this project or Fraunhofer by any chance, maybe just Germany in general?
I agree with all the legitimate criticisms, especially considering that it is very possible that what they’re actually doing is using the laser to essentially create a hydrocarbon based glue in situ from the primary material itself.
It is an interesting discovery and process in and of itself. I’m not sure why there seems to be this obsessive defensiveness of Fraunhofer in the comments here.
There could be several reasons, but the PRopaganda people on this are going about things rather ham-fisted. My guess is that there are specific “eco” type grant or funding requirements that need to push the idea that it’s reducing “carbon” or oil dependence and can do away with mean old, no good, totally awful plastics; and cannot just be honest because of that, because all of the environmental stuff is so frequently inherently dishonest and rather delusional even, because ironically, the money of funding and profit and going to market cause their own greed, just from a different angle.
A hidden little dirty secret in Germany in particular is that all these boutique niche solutions are really just greenwashed, statist “capitalism” rather than greenbackwashed, de facto statist “capitalism”.
They’re both just theft from the multitude to enrich the minority, just by different means.
They can be and they are interconverted, both in living beings and in the industry.
In paper, most of the wood components except cellulose have been removed, so paper usually consists mostly of carbohydrates.
In general any adhesive is neither a hydrocarbon nor a carbohydrate, but a derivative of them. Natural adhesives are usually derived either from proteins, e.g. various kinds of animal glues, or from starch or from various kinds of gums or of resins or of latex.
Bitumen has been used as an adhesive that consists mostly of hydrocarbons, but it also includes some oxidized components that provide most of the adhesion, as pure hydrocarbons have lubricating properties, not adhesive properties.
What could one improve how the operate?
A critic ones put this: Fraunhofer has the same of employees as Eth Zurich but just 20% of the start ups.
There are better institutions for deep tech like Sprind and even max Planck institutes.
The monkey's paw curls. Now they were all invented by Oracle...
The welding utilizes the existing ligand glue that holds the wood fibers together, as it's essentially a natural composite.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0k04hjdYuQ