Paper mill
Encyclopedia
Factory
A factory or manufacturing plant is an industrial building where laborers manufacture goods or supervise machines processing one product into another. Most modern factories have large warehouses or warehouse-like facilities that contain heavy equipment used for assembly line production...
devoted to making paper
Paper
Paper is a thin material mainly used for writing upon, printing upon, drawing or for packaging. It is produced by pressing together moist fibers, typically cellulose pulp derived from wood, rags or grasses, and drying them into flexible sheets....
from vegetable fibres such as wood pulp
Wood pulp
Pulp is a lignocellulosic fibrous material prepared by chemically or mechanically separating cellulose fibres from wood, fibre crops or waste paper. Wood pulp is the most common raw material in papermaking.-History:...
, old rags and other ingredients using a Fourdrinier machine
Fourdrinier machine
This article contains a glossary section at the end.Most modern papermaking machines are based on the principles of the Fourdrinier Machine. It has been used in some variation since its inception...
or other type of paper machine.
History
Historical investigations into the origin of the paper mill are complicated by differing definitions and loose terminology from modern authors: Many modern scholars use the term to refer indiscriminately to all kinds of millsMill (grinding)
A grinding mill is a unit operation designed to break a solid material into smaller pieces. There are many different types of grinding mills and many types of materials processed in them. Historically mills were powered by hand , working animal , wind or water...
, whether powered by humans, by animals
Horse mill
A horse mill is a mill that uses a horse as the power source. Any milling process can be powered in this way, but the most frequent use of animal power in horse mills was for grinding grain and pumping water. Other animals used for powering mills include dogs, donkeys and oxen. Engines powered by...
or by water
Watermill
A watermill is a structure that uses a water wheel or turbine to drive a mechanical process such as flour, lumber or textile production, or metal shaping .- History :...
. Their propensity to refer to any ancient paper manufacturing centre as a "mill", without further specifying its exact power drive, has increased the difficulty of identifying the particularly efficient and historically important water-powered type.
Human and animal-powered mills
While the use of human and animal powered mills were known to Chinese and Muslim papermakersPapermaking
Papermaking is the process of making paper, a substance which is used universally today for writing and packaging.In papermaking a dilute suspension of fibres in water is drained through a screen, so that a mat of randomly interwoven fibres is laid down. Water is removed from this mat of fibres by...
, evidence for water-powered paper mills is elusive in both of them. The general absence of the use of water-power in Muslim papermaking is suggested by the habit of Muslim authors to call a production center not a "mill", but a "paper manufactory".
Although scholars have identified "paper mills" in Abbasid-era Baghdad
Baghdad
Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...
in 794–795, the evidence that waterpower was applied to papermaking at this time is a matter of scholarly debate. In the Moroccan
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
city of Fez
Fes
Fes or Fez is the second largest city of Morocco, after Casablanca, with a population of approximately 1 million . It is the capital of the Fès-Boulemane region....
, Ibn Battuta
Ibn Battuta
Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Battuta , or simply Ibn Battuta, also known as Shams ad–Din , was a Muslim Moroccan Berber explorer, known for his extensive travels published in the Rihla...
speaks of "400 mill stones
Millstone
Millstones or mill stones are used in windmills and watermills, including tide mills, for grinding wheat or other grains.The type of stone most suitable for making millstones is a siliceous rock called burrstone , an open-textured, porous but tough, fine-grained sandstone, or a silicified,...
for paper". Since Ibn Battuta does not mention the use of water-power and such a number of water-mills would be grotesquely high, the passage is generally taken to refer to human or animal force
Horse mill
A horse mill is a mill that uses a horse as the power source. Any milling process can be powered in this way, but the most frequent use of animal power in horse mills was for grinding grain and pumping water. Other animals used for powering mills include dogs, donkeys and oxen. Engines powered by...
.
Water-powered mills
An exhaustive survey of milling in Al-AndalusAl-Andalus
Al-Andalus was the Arabic name given to a nation and territorial region also commonly referred to as Moorish Iberia. The name describes parts of the Iberian Peninsula and Septimania governed by Muslims , at various times in the period between 711 and 1492, although the territorial boundaries...
did not uncover a single water-powered paper mill, nor do the Spanish books of property distribution (Repartimientos) after the Christian reconquest
Reconquista
The Reconquista was a period of almost 800 years in the Middle Ages during which several Christian kingdoms succeeded in retaking the Muslim-controlled areas of the Iberian Peninsula broadly known as Al-Andalus...
refer to any. Arabic texts never use the term mill in connection with papermaking and the most thorough account of Muslim papermaking, the one by the Zirid Sultan Al-Muizz ibn Badis
Al-Muizz ibn Badis
Al-Muizz ibn Badis ; 1008–1062) was the fourth ruler of the Zirids in Ifriqiya, reigning from 1016 to 1062.Al-Muizz ascended the throne as a minor following the death of his father Badis ibn Mansur, with his aunt acting as regent. In 1016 there was a bloody revolt in Ifriqiya in which the Fatimid...
, describes the art purely in terms of a handcraft. Donald Hill
Donald Routledge Hill
Donald Routledge Hill was an English engineer and historian of science and technology.Alongside more general works on the history of technology, he wrote works on the history of medieval Arabic science and technology, and translated The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices of the...
has identified a possible reference to a water-powered paper mill in Samarkand
Samarkand
Although a Persian-speaking region, it was not united politically with Iran most of the times between the disintegration of the Seleucid Empire and the Arab conquest . In the 6th century it was within the domain of the Turkic kingdom of the Göktürks.At the start of the 8th century Samarkand came...
, in the 11th-century work of the Persian scholar Abu Rayhan Biruni, but concludes that the passage is "too brief to enable us to say with certainty" that it refers to a water-powered paper mill. While this is seen by Halevi nonetheless as evidence of Samarkand first harnessing waterpower in the production of paper, he concedes that it is not known if waterpower was applied to papermaking elsewhere across the Islamic world at the time; Robert I. Burns remains altogether sceptical given the isolated occurrence of the reference and the prevalence of manual labour in Islamic papermaking elsewhere.
Hill notes that paper mills appear in early Christian Catalonia
Catalonia
Catalonia is an autonomous community in northeastern Spain, with the official status of a "nationality" of Spain. Catalonia comprises four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. Its capital and largest city is Barcelona. Catalonia covers an area of 32,114 km² and has an...
n documentation from the 1150s, which may imply Islamic origins, but here too hard evidence is lacking, and the case for early Catalan water-powered paper mills has been thoroughly dismissed after a re-examination of the evidence cited by Burns. Likewise, the identification of early hydraulic stamping mills in medieval documents from Fabriano
Fabriano
Fabriano is a town and comune of Ancona province in the Italian region of the Marche, at 325 m above sea-level. It lies in the Esino valley 44 km upstream and SW of Jesi; and 15 km ENE of Fossato di Vico and 36 km east of Gubbio...
, Italy, is completely without substance.
The earliest certain evidence to a water-powered paper mill dates to 1282 in the Spanish Kingdom of Aragon
Kingdom of Aragon
The Kingdom of Aragon was a medieval and early modern kingdom in the Iberian Peninsula, corresponding to the modern-day autonomous community of Aragon, in Spain...
. A decree by the Christian king Peter III
Peter III of Aragon
Peter the Great was the King of Aragon of Valencia , and Count of Barcelona from 1276 to his death. He conquered Sicily and became its king in 1282. He was one of the greatest of medieval Aragonese monarchs.-Youth and succession:Peter was the eldest son of James I of Aragon and his second wife...
addresses the establishment of a royal "molendinum
Watermill
A watermill is a structure that uses a water wheel or turbine to drive a mechanical process such as flour, lumber or textile production, or metal shaping .- History :...
", a proper hydraulic mill, in the paper manufacturing centre of Xàtiva
Xàtiva
Xàtiva is a town in eastern Spain, in the province of Valencia, on the right bank of the river Albaida and at the junction of the Valencia–Murcia and Valencia Albacete railways....
. The crown innovation appears to be resented by the local Muslim papermakering community; the document guarantees the Muslim subjects the right to continue their way of traditional papermaking by beating the pulp manually and grants them the right to be exempted from work in the new mill.
The first permanent paper mill north of the Alpes was established in Nuremberg
Nuremberg
Nuremberg[p] is a city in the German state of Bavaria, in the administrative region of Middle Franconia. Situated on the Pegnitz river and the Rhine–Main–Danube Canal, it is located about north of Munich and is Franconia's largest city. The population is 505,664...
by Ulman Stromer
Ulman Stromer
Ulman Stromer was a German long-distance trader, factory owner and councillor of Nuremberg, then a free imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire...
in 1390; it is later depicted in the lavishly illustrated Nuremberg Chronicle
Nuremberg Chronicle
right|thumbnail|240px|Fifth dayThe Nuremberg Chronicle is an illustrated Biblical paraphrase and world history that follows the story of human history related in the Bible; it includes the histories of a number of important Western cities. Written in Latin by Hartmann Schedel, with a version in...
. From the mid-14th century onwards, European paper milling underwent a rapid improvement of many work processes.
Characteristics
Paper mills can be fully integrated mills or nonintegrated mills. Integrated mills consist of a pulp mill and a paper mill on the same site. Such mills receive logs or wood chips and produce paper. It is a common misconception that paper mills are sources of odors. Pulp mills and the pulping section of integrated mills (particularly if using the kraft processKraft process
The kraft process describes a technology for conversion of wood into wood pulp consisting of almost pure cellulose fibers...
) commonly have associated odors; nonintegrated mills purchase wood pulp, usually in dry bales known as market pulp, and produce little, if any, odor.
The modern paper mill uses large amounts of energy
Energy
In physics, energy is an indirectly observed quantity. It is often understood as the ability a physical system has to do work on other physical systems...
, water
Water
Water is a chemical substance with the chemical formula H2O. A water molecule contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms connected by covalent bonds. Water is a liquid at ambient conditions, but it often co-exists on Earth with its solid state, ice, and gaseous state . Water also exists in a...
, and wood pulp
Wood pulp
Pulp is a lignocellulosic fibrous material prepared by chemically or mechanically separating cellulose fibres from wood, fibre crops or waste paper. Wood pulp is the most common raw material in papermaking.-History:...
in a highly efficient and extremely complex series of processes, using modern and sophisticated controls technology
Technology
Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...
to produce a sheet of paper that can be used in incredibly diverse ways. Modern paper machines are very large and can be 500 feet (~150 m) in length, produce a sheet 400 inches (~10 m) wide, and operate at speeds of more than 60 mph (100 km/h). The two main suppliers of paper machines are Metso
Metso
Metso Corporation was created in 1999 through the merger of Valmet and Rauma and is headquartered in Helsinki, Finland. Metso is a global supplier of process industry machinery and systems as well as know-how and aftermarket services...
and Voith
Voith
The Voith GmbH, which is headquartered in Germany, is a family-run corporation in the mechanical engineering sector with worldwide operations....
.
Sources
- Tsien, Tsuen-Hsuin: "Science and Civilisation in China", Chemistry and Chemical Technology (Vol. 5), Paper and Printing (Part 1), Cambridge University Press, 1985
External links
- List of International graphic paper mills
- Paperweb.biz - Paper world directory and search engine for the pulp and paper world
- List of paper mills on paper and print monthly http://www.paperandprint.com/mill-branded-products/mills.cgi