ABSTRACT
This investigation was carried out in an effort to search for raw materials to replace the presently imported long fibre pulp for the production of pulp and paper in Nigeria. Three fibre sources namely;silk cotton tree,bagasse and rice straw were investigated. Maceration process of pulping was used to pulp these raw materials and paper samples were produced from their pulps. The objectives of this research were to evaluate three Nigerian fibre sources and determine their suitability for pulp and papermaking. The three materials; Ceiba pentadra, bagasse and rice straw were all collected from Raffin Gussan environs in Kaduna State. The tear force of the sample papers produced were found to be 956.48mN, 1226.25mN and759.25mN tear force respectively. The paper samples produced from these three materials posses greater tear force than TAPPI T414 standard 500-700mN for tear. The tear factor and breaking weight of these materials were found to be 162.50m2 and 22.07N, 125.00m2 and 26.00, 147.98m2 and 6.57N respectively. These values are greater than the minimum standard for all grades of papers of The Nigeria Paper Mill Limited Jebba whose tear factor and breaking weight were 120m2 and 5.6-7.5N respectively, showing that they would be good for the manufacture of writing and printing papers. These same sample papers however showed 9.20Nm/g, 6.50Nm/g and 3.14Nm/g respectively for tensile strength index and 42.50kPa, 57.50kPa and 7.00kPa respectively for burst strength. These figures fall below TAPPI standard of 40-70Nm/g (MD) and 20-40 Nm/g (CD) for tensile strength index (T494) and 250-300kPa for burst strength (T403). This indicates that their paper products may not be good for packaging and wrapping applications.