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P.W. Gri ffi n et al.
west. Indeed, the Islamic civilisation was in direct contact with the Far East by the Early Middle Ages (6th to the 10th Century CE) [12]. The Arabic world imported from the east valuable materials (including high-quality steel, paper, porcelain and silk) and other elements of knowledge, such as the Indian system of mathematical notation (which is still known today as ‘ Arabic numerals ’ ) [14]. The fruits of Arabic science and technology progressively migrated across Europe. But the only signi fi cant advance made in the Ancient Greek and Roman civilisations in terms of writing was in the replace- ment of papyrus by parchment [14]. This parchment was made from untanned leather, with the best quality ( ‘ vellum ’ ) being made from the skin of a very young calf or kid [15]. It was worked and soaked in lime to get rid of dirt and large amounts of natural grease; dried on a stretching-frame; shaped with a knife; and then smoothed to produce a perfect writing-surface [14]. (In the UK, Acts of Parliament are still printed on vellum for archival purposes.) However, parchment was mainly replaced by paper; the earliest paper being referred to as ‘ cloth parchment ’ . The invention of printing with movable type by Johannes Gutenberg (the German blacksmith, goldsmith, printer and publisher; c. 1398 – 1468) [16] and the increasing demand for books ultimately led to the development of good quality paper from rag pulp [15]. It was in fact produced from various raw materials of a fi brous nature, not just rags from linen or cotton, but also from straw or wood [14,17]. Pulp was manufactured by pulverising such cellulosic ingredients, highly diluted with water, in order to disperse the fi bres [11,14,16], and then pouring the resulting thick liquid pulp into sieves (or ‘ moulds ’ ) [15]. This would ensure that the fi bre retained the necessary shape from which it could be sequentially pounded in a vat and dried [15,17]. The rectangular mould - a screen or tray with a fi ne wire screen surrounded by a wooden frame (or ‘ deckle ’ ) across the bottom [11] - was dipped into the vat and then held up to drain. In the 15th Century there were about 11 wires to the cm, but this was gradually increased to produce fi ner paper [12]. The paper on the bottom of the tray was then placed onto woollen felt [14], and constructed as a ‘ quire ’ of some 144 sheets and felts [17]; prior to going under a screw press. Sheets of pressed paper would be separated from the felts, and subsequently laid out on drying racks in the atmosphere; typically in a loft [11,15]. Additives, such as china clay or gypsum, were mixed with the pulp to provide ‘ fi lling ’ and gloss, thereby improving the quality of the fi nished paper for artwork or il- lustrations [11,14,15]. Thus, by the age of the English literary writer Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709 – 1784) printing was already 300 years old and, from the perspective of the user (in contrast to the maker), the printed book was not fundamentally di ff erent from books today [14]. In 1700 there were around 100 paper mills in England; over half were in the South East (clustered around London), and the rest quite widely spread [17]. By this time water power was often used at paper mills to drive the machinery that pounded the rags into pulp [17]. A good supply of pure water was also essential for mixing with the rags.
and ‘ Food & Drink ’ , which represent the EI and NEI industrial sectors respectively. Here the pulp and paper sector of UK industry is examined in terms of their energy use and GHG emissions, as well as its im- provement potential. It can be characterised as being heterogeneous (having a diverse range of product outputs, including banknotes, books, magazines, newspapers and packaging, such as corrugated paper and board), and as sitting on the rough boundary between EI and NEI in- dustries (see Fig. 2 [7]). [A high value in any of the measures shown in Fig. 2 suggests that a given sub-sector would be EI.] However, the Confederation of Paper Industries (CPI), the trade association, regards the industry as being EI. It accounts for some 6% of GHG emissions from UK industry as shown in Fig. 3 [7]. Notwithstanding the growth of elec- tronic media, domestic consumers and businesses continue to make use of paper in all its many forms. The opportunities and challenges to reducing industrial energy de- mand and carbon dioxide equivalent (CO 2e ) emissions (carbon dioxide is the principal GHG [5]) in the British paper industry have been eval- uated, although the lessons learned are applicable across much of the industrialised world. The data here has been largely extracted from an industrial Usable Energy Database (UED) that was produced for the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC) [actually an academic community or network funded by the Research Councils UK (RCUK) Energy Programme ] by the present authors (see Gri ffi n et al. [7,9,10]). A set of industrial decarbonisation ‘ technology roadmaps ’ out to 2050 are fi nally reported, based on various alternative scenarios: named Low Action (LA), Rea- sonable Action (RA), Reasonable Action including Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) [RA-CCS], and Radical Transition (RT) respectively. Such roadmaps represent future projections that match short-term (say out to 2035) and long-term (2050) targets with speci fi c technological solu- tions to help meet the key energy saving and decarbonisation goals. Their contents were built up in the present study on the basis of the improvement potentials associated with various processes employed in the paper industry and embedded in the UED [7,9,10]. They help identify the steps needed to be made by industrialists, policy makers and other stakeholders in order to ensure the decarbonisation of the UK paper sector.
2. The pulp and paper sector
2.1. Historical development of the paper industry
The historical context in which the various industrial sectors are viewed has changed over time. Sir Neil Cossons (an industrial archae- ologist and former Director of the Science Museum in London, 1986 – 2000), for example, placed the paper sector under the broad umbrella of ‘ The Chemical Industries ’ [11]. This was because (at least since the 1870s) pulp - from which paper is produced - had to be boiled, along with a variety of acid and alkaline reagents, in order to purify or remove contaminants. But it was Arabic science from about 3500 BCE, based largely in Egypt and the Near East, that led to what is now re- cognised as chemicals [12,13]: the early smelting of metals [especially copper, gold and mercury (or ‘ quicksilver ’ ), as well as alloys like bronze] gave rise to an understanding of the properties of their chemical com- pounds. The Egyptians had paper and ink with which to write [14]. They made paper from the pith of the papyrus reed, which was cut into strips and laid across each other at right angles, then pressed, dried, smoothed, and gummed together in order to form a roll. Ink was made from a lamp-black and gum solution, and their pens (used brush-wise at fi rst, but later cut into quills) from rushes. Ancient Egypt had a monopoly on papyrus, but was obviously able to export it [14]. They had no need to resort to cuneiform writing [12]; fi rst developed by the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia (c. 3500 – 3000 BCE). This term originally came from the Latin ‘ cuneus ’ , whereby a wedge-shaped stylus was used to make impressions on a clay or similar surface. Egypt ’ s hieroglyphic script meant that it provided a major stimulus to the spread of writing amongst its neighbours [14]; both to the east and
Fig. 2. Primary energy intensity, percentage of costs represented by energy and water, and mean primary energy use per enterprise (re fl ected by the area of the data points). Source: adapted from Gri ffi n et al. [7].
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