Comparative analysis of dot reproduction on TiO2 coated printing substrates and PS7 commercial paper

The most commonly used raw material sources for paper production are perennial plants. With the increasing destruction of forests, the awareness of the need to conserve them is growing and recycled paper is being used for more and more purposes. To make recycled paper, used paper can only be recycled five to seven times and therefore paper recovery should not be the only option for preserving forest areas. In recent years, there has been an increasing trend worldwide to replace traditional wood cellulose fibers for paper production with non-wood cellulose fibers. The use of alternative cellulose sources for paper production, such as cereal straw, reduces the consumption of virgin wood cellulose fibers. In this research, 30% of the wood cellulose fibers were replaced by wheat cellulose fibers during the laboratory production of the printing substrate. They were additionally coated with one or two layers of TiO2 in order to achieve the optical properties of a process-bleached commercial paper. After coating, the produced printing substrates were printed using an inkjet printer. In this way, the usability of the produced printing substrates was confirmed based on the reproduction quality of eight dots of different sizes, using commercial paper as a reference.