INGEDE’s Alex Fischer comments on Digital Print Deinking Alliance studies.
Alex Fischer, a member of the International Association of the Deinking Industry (INDEGE), discusses developments in the deinking industry following the CTP’s Technical Conference on Deinking of Digital Prints in Grenoble, and the IMI’s 19th European Ink Jet Printing Conference in Lisbon.
Industry analysts InfoTrends that the increase in overall inkjet share in document printing could lead to a “tenfold increase in the amount of inkjet print in the recycled waste stream, rising from 0.05 percent to 0.5 percent in 2015”.
PrintWeek report that roughly 20 papers on the subject were present at the CTP’s event.
The Digital Print Deinking Alliance (DPDA) sponsored studies highlighted areas of improvements that were possible through changing deinking conditions, although Fischer commented that “progress was very touch, I didn’t see much to celebrate.
“Everything you do for inkjet will reduce the yield for offset. For example, these mills process 2,000 tonnes of paper everyday. If you changed conditions so that you could process 5 tonnes of inkjet, then even a one percent reduction in yield would mean 20 tonnes less product and 20 tonnes more waste.”
Fischer identified the greatest area of promise for deinking was centred on ink technology: “Some resin-based inks appeared to show good deinkability,” highlighting Japanese pigment manufacturer Kao’s coated pigment inks and Xerox’s solid ink, in which the substrate is precoated.