Refractive index matching improves optical object detection in paper

The demand for high-quality recycled pulp products has increased the need for an efficient deinking process. Assessing process efficiency via residual ink on test sheets has so far been limited to the sheet surface due to the poor transparency of paper. A refractive index matching method was studied to obtain a quantitative measure of particles within the volume of a paper sheet. In actual measurements a glass plate with etched lines from 8.5 mu m to 281.1 mu m wide was placed beneath the layers of cleared paper, and visible lines were counted with a microscope. Three different paper grades were tested with transparentizing agents. A diffusion theory-based regression model was used to find a correlation between transparency, paper grammage and paper thickness. These equations enable the determination of the size of an object detectable from a paper with a certain transparentizing agent or the parameters of a test sheet needed to detect objects of a known size. Anise oil was found to be the better of the two agents used, and they both had better transparentizing ability than air or water. The transparent paper grammage of the paper grades was determined for all the tested media. Paper's transparency was found to depend more on paper's thickness than grammage.