Date of Award

Spring 5-5-2023

Level of Access Assigned by Author

Open-Access Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Chemical Engineering (MSChE)

Department

Chemical Engineering

Advisor

Douglas Bousfield

Second Committee Member

Jinwu Wang

Third Committee Member

Bill DeSisto

Abstract

Layers of cellulose nanofibrils (CNF) on paper have been demonstrated to be an effective barrier against oxygen and grease and have been shown to improve the barrier performance of dispersion-based barrier coatings. The potential to produce paper grades that have good oxygen, grease, and moisture barrier properties is clear, but a good understanding of the synergies between CNF, other coating layers, and water-borne barrier coatings (WBBC) is not clear. Different coat weights of a WBBC were applied to papers that have a range of different qualities and amounts of the CNF layer on them. The same WBBC was also applied to conventionally pigmented coated paper, with various types of pigments and latex levels. Samples are characterized in terms of grease resistance, water vapor transmission rate (WVTR), and oxygen transmission rate before and after folding. When WBBC is applied on a CNF layer, the WVTR improves by more than a factor of ten compared to when a WBBC is applied to the base paper with no CNF layer. Similar improvement is also seen when the WBBC is applied to the pigmented coating layer. Folding decreases, the moisture barrier performance to some degree, but not grease when CNF is used.

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