REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

Nowadays, paper is really important that men of today cannot live without it. We
use paper for so many things. We can write and store documents in it. We can use
paper in representing values like paper money, bank note, check, voucher, and ticket.
And in entertainment and education purposes, paper is used to make books,
magazines, and newspaper. It can be produced with a wide variety of properties,
depending on its intended use. But ever since the invention of paper until to the current
development of it, we always think that paper can only just come from barks of trees
and it is just like that.

For it is a given fact that different kinds of paper that we use in our everyday life
came from the part of trees and plants that contains fiber. Fiber is a thread-like thick-
walled cell that forms the constitution of tissues. It can be matted into sheets to make
products such as paper or felt. Most of the research proposals about it used different
parts of plants such as Malunggay (Moringa olifera) barks where the first step that the
researcher and the doer of the project is to remove the barks of Malunggay tree. The
outer skin needs to be scraped off and bark is stripped off from the inner wood. Then,
the barks are sun-dried. The dried barks are boiled in caustic soda or sodium hydroxide
(NaOH) and water for 2 to 3 hours. After that the sun-dried and boiled barks are washed
to remove chemicals in it. The product then, is pounded to produce wood pulp and
molded it on a screen and let dry to produce paper.

There is also study that is closely related to the first one. In the experiment, the
researchers used bark of okra. As the same procedure goes, the bark also is peeled
and let dry for few weeks. The bark is boiled in the soda to get the pulp and remove
chemicals in it. The product is molded in a screen and dried until it becomes paper.

A project was also conducted to compare the commercial papers to see which
has a better quality hand-made paper or machine-produced paper. The research
material also existed to give the paper a quality that is unique and natural. In this, they
differentiated the three kinds of leaves: banana leaves, papaya leaves, and pechay
leaves. But then, they still have done the same procedure for production with little
distinction. The researchers cut the leaves into pieces and put it in the cauldron. Then,
they added equal amounts of water then boiled it. After it boiled, they added a
tablespoon of caustic soda and stirred constantly. Henceforth, they drained the water
and blended it until the leaves turned into small parts. They, again, drained the water
again and put the leaves inside the basin. They added an amount of bleach into the
mixture and proceeded into washing the leaves and molding it. The end product is
shaped into a paper.

The related studies given made the researcher to think how to make the project
have a different approach. In this research, the researchers use same methodology
process and it is just that they [the researchers] will be using the husk of the talisay
(Terminalia catappa) fruit. The said fruit was chosen due to the fact that that contains
4.94% crude fiber that makes it feasible to produce a sheet of paper. Also the research
aims to make an inorganic paper that produces plastic as a by-product. The research
assures that harmful chemicals are not used in the project which can deteriorate the
environmental state and even the health of people.

The aforementioned solution is a mixture made up of potato starch, water,

vinegar, and glycerine (C 3H8O3). The by-product of the mixture, amazingly, turns into a
plastic. To support the fact, the researchers searched for the molecular level of the
starch and how plastics are formed. Plastics are formed from polymers which are
composed of long chains of atoms bonded to one another. And starch, then, is a
mixture of two polymers called Amylose and Amylopectin, in a ratio of about 1:4 where
in 4 parts are from Amylopectin. Amylose is a linear polymer of glucose linked with
mainly (14) bonds. It can be made of several thousands of glucose units whereas
Amylopectin is a highly branched polymer of glucose.

What the researcher aims to mean is to get something that resembles plastic.
The project needs to get straight long chains of polymer in order to be accomplished.
Since starch has both straight and branched polymers, we need to remove or alter the
amylopectin. Thus, makes the researcher having left with long straight chains to make
the paper. Since going thoroughly picking out all the individual amylopectin molecules
with the use of an electron microscope is not obviously an option, the researchers of the
project thought that using vinegar or acetic acid (C 2H4O2) to break down the
amylopectin into short straight molecules of dextrin. Dextrin anyway is produced
commercially from amylopectin by Hydrochloric acid hydrolysis: the amylopectin is
roasted in vessels jacketed in hot oil the oil is heated to 450 C -- at the same time
HCl is added to the amylopectin the acid plus the hear causes the molecular structure
of the starch to polymerize. So we are lect with amylose and dextrin in which we add
glycerin. The reason behind adding glycerin is to have the plastic to be soft and flexible.
And to achieve also the property, plasticizer is added to the plastic resin. Plasticizer are
additive that contains phthalates containing the property of flexibility and durability.

From the supporting data above, the researcher got the idea to put the mixture all
over the paper to the dried talisay husk since putting it cannot affect its shape. Once the
mixture dries, the product will look like a glossy plastic paper that has the potential to be
used for tarpaulins. And if the desired product is achieved, the project can be used to
replace tarpaulins that contain harmful chemicals that harm the environment.