BOD & COD in Effluent of Pulp and Paper Mills
By Sara Mortenson (revised by Megan Webster and Stefanie Vagianos)
The history of papermaking begins with the Chinese in the earliest years AD. They used mulberry bark in their processes, but as papermaking traveled to Europe, rags became the principal raw material. William Rittenhouse is credited with establishing the first mill in the United States in 1690. One could say that the beginning of modern fine papermaking started during the period of 1756 and 1772 when Dr. Jacob Christian Schaffer published a treatise on the use of vegetable fibers for paper and the use of pulp made from sawdust and shavings for the proposed manufacture of paper. By 1776 the United States paper industry was going strong in New York, Massachusetts, Maine, and Connecticut. In 1799 and 1800, a machine which allowed for the making of paper in a continuous sheet revolutionized the paper industry. At around the same time, pulp was being made from wood fibers instead of cotton and linen rags. These two developments together changed the way pulp and papermaking continued. The costs were reduced, and mills were being built close to forests instead of near cities.
It was in the nineteenth century, however, when the pulp and paper industry started to resemble what it is now. In 1844 Charles Fenery invented the first groundwood, or mechanical pulping, machine. In 1867 American Benjamin Chew Tilghman invented the sulfite process, although the same process was being development simultaneously in Sweden, Germany, and Austria. Under the German patent, the International Fiber and Paper Company was built in the United States in 1887.
From 1954 to 1982, the pulp and paper industry has decreased in the United States. It has gone from the fifth largest industry to the ninth within that time span. In 1982 the sales were more than $60 billion and the employees numbered more than 600,000. The Northeast is the oldest producing region, however we have witnessed a relative decline in the production in the Northeast and the midwest. The pulp and paper industry is mostly run by large companies, but there are many small specialty producers as well.