Neutral Deinking of Old Newsprints Contaminated with Flexo Ink

Presence of small amount of old newspapers printed with waterbased flexographic inks leads to a significant loss of brightness of the deinked pulp by flotation process. Recently there has been an increased interests in employing neutral deinking processes to solve the problems associated with waterbased flexo ink. A comparative experimental study was performed to evaluate the efficiency of neutral deinking and conventional alkaline deinking for ONP furnishes contaminated with flexo ink. Effects of the deinking processes on pulp quality and white water characteristics were examined. It was shown that neutral deinking would provide significant improvement in brightness, yield, and freeness as compared with conventional alkaline deinking. There was no increase in brightness when OMG was added in the furnish up to 20 ％, and it was attributed to the redeposition of flexo inks on chemical pulp fibers.