A simple indicator paper approach to recycle mill stickie control, 2015 PEERS Conference

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The manufacture and use of a simple indicator paper for monitoring critical stickies levels in a recycle mill is described. It was found that the theoretical detection limit is ~ 150 ppm, whereas a practical limit is ~ 400 ppm. An ordinary Avery mailing label was treated with two dyes and was found to respond colorimetrically to microstickies in lab and process waters. The indicator paper is a polyacrylate-base mailing label dipped in a mixture of Safranin O and Astrazon Green dyes, dried, and then dipped in process water and re-dried. It was found that the color on the adhesive side changed in the presence of microstickies, a finding that was confirmed by Optical (RGB, red, green, blue) analysis. The mechanism may be the following: during redrying, the microstickies chromatographically separate the two dyes to a small extent across the z-direction of the label to bring about the color change.