Find an ink that would decompose for recycling paper

Introduction: (Initial Observation)

While visiting a print shop I saw viscous, oily, tar like printing inks with its special odor. Large cans of inks in different colors and many emptied cans, was an indication of the large amounts of ink that is being used in that print shop. I am now wondering what happens to the ink when printed papers are being recycled?

Obviously the ink has to be removed and disposed as a part of recycling process.

Can inks be decomposed? The appearance and strong odor of the ink used in the print shop made me think that the printing ink is some combination of plastic and oil based substances. Plastics and oil based products are not known as decomposable.

Can we find an ink that is decomposable?

If you need help in analyzing the results and drawing a conclusion, you may email your results with a description of your test samples to info@ScienceProject.com

Please write your member id in the subject line of your email.

Information Gathering:

Find out about ink and how it is made. Read books, magazines or ask professionals who might know in order to learn about the effect of micro organisms and environmental factors on decomposing material. Keep track of where you got your information from.

Plan for gathering information. Decide what are the things that you want to know. Make a list of those things. Then decide how do you want to find the answer. (this is a sample)

1. How much printing ink is being manufactured and used per day?
2. What are the general formulas or ingredients of printing inks?
3. What percentage of printing inks or their ingredients are decomposable?
4. ………..

Following are some information that you may find:

One ink manufacturing company (Golden Dragon) produces 8000 tons of printing inks and coating per year.

By now, I know that annual global sales of printing inks is $12 billion, however I don’t know how many tons of printing inks is being produced each year. So I search for the price of printing ink.

A quick search showed that the price of offset printing ink on ebay is about $12 for a 5 lb can. That is almost $3/lb.

So $12 billion ink is about 4 billion lbs.

We can avoid 4,000,000,000 lbs of contaminants each year by using decomposable inks.

What are the ingredients of printing inks?

Newspaper ink is carbon black bound in mineral oil, linseed oil, etc. Carbon black is finely divided carbon produced by burning hydrocarbon – e.g. methane – but not completely. You get a very fine pigment and up to 95% carbon so it is a very intense black. Newspaper ink is classified as no-heat ink. Ingredients in no-heat inks fall into four major classifications: Pigments, Resins, Oils or Carriers, and Additives.

Source: http://www.tintas.com/tech_info/what_is_ink.html

Further research on the type of resins used in printing inks indicates that mainly synthetic resins are being used for ink manufacturing. Some of such resins are:

1. Alkyd resins
2. Maleic resins
3. Resin modified, reduced phenolic resins
4. Phenol formaldehyde resins
5. Ketonic resins
6. Polyester resins
7. Metallic resins
8. Acrylic resins
9. Amino resins
10. Polyamide resins
11. Epoxy resins
12. Phenol Formaldehyde resins
13. Poly vinyl resins

Almost all of these resins are not decomposable easily. As a matter of fact many of these resins are also used to make paints and other protective coatings.

Question/ Purpose:

What do you want to find out? Write a statement that describes what you want to do. Use your observations and questions to write the statement.

The purpose of this project is to find an ink that can be decomposed.

Decomposition means disintegration and breaking large molecules to smaller components. All the resins and organic material can be decomposed by burning, however we can not burn the paper as a part of recycling process. We need to find a more practical method such as using chemicals or microorganisms, so we define the purpose of this project as follows:

The purpose of this project is to find an ink (any brand or formula) that can be decomposed in wet and room temperature conditions using chemicals or microorganisms.

Identify Variables:

When you think you know what variables may be involved, think about ways to change one at a time. If you change more than one at a time, you will not know what variable is causing your observation. Sometimes variables are linked and work together to cause something. At first, try to choose variables that you think act independently of each other.

The independent variable (also known as manipulated variable) is the ink (type or brand). The dependent variable is the the time needed for decomposition.

Controlled variables are light, temperature, and all other environmental conditions that may affect the decomposition time.

In theory, all material can be decomposed. The only difference is in the time that they need for decomposition. A plant leaf may decompose in just a few days. Wool, cellulose and hair may decompose in a few months. Most plastics and synthetic resins need a few hundred years or more to decompose. So in general when we talk about a product that can be decomposed, we mean a product that can be decomposed by soil bacteria or sunlight in a short period of time (usually less than a year).

Hypothesis:

Based on your gathered information, make an educated guess about what types of things affect the system you are working with. Identifying variables is necessary before you can make a hypothesis.

I think only the inks that are made from natural oils and resins can be decomposed.

Experiment Design:

Design an experiment to test each hypothesis. Make a step-by-step list of what you will do to answer each question. This list is called an experimental procedure. For an experiment to give answers you can trust, it must have a “control.” A control is an additional experimental trial or run. It is a separate experiment, done exactly like the others. The only difference is that no experimental variables are changed. A control is a neutral “reference point” for comparison that allows you to see what changing a variable does by comparing it to not changing anything. Dependable controls are sometimes very hard to develop. They can be the hardest part of a project. Without a control you cannot be sure that changing the variable causes your observations. A series of experiments that includes a control is called a “controlled experiment.”

Introduction:

Air, sunlight and the soil bacteria are the factors that can cause decomposition; However, the best decomposers are bacteria and other microorganisms such as fungi. It is easier to dig a hole in the ground an burry some material and let it disappear gradually. So inks from printed paper can be removed and disposed off like household garbage.

In our experiments we will use soil bacteria to test the inks for decomposition.

Experiment 1:

In this experiment you will extract bacteria from soil and use them to test the effect of bacteria on ink. Wear gloves and be careful to prevent contamination when working with soil bacteria.

1. Gather samples of printed paper for test. Choose papers from newspapers, magazines, postal cards, books and other printed material that you can find. Cut two identical small square about 10cm x 10cm from each paper for test. Save one of the squares from each sample as control experiment and do nothing with them. Use the other one for decomposition experiment in step 3.
2. Mix about 1 kg backyard soil with about 2 to 4 liters of water. Stir it so the soil bacteria can enter the water. Let it settle down for about 30 minutes. Then carefully transfer water to another container. Filter this water with coffee filter to get a clear liquid.
3. Place each paper sample in a different plastic plate. Add about 10 ml of filtered soil water to each plate. This amount should be enough to keep the papers wet.
4. Cover all plates with plastic film to keep the moisture.
5. Make daily observations for 7 to 10 days and record your results daily.
6. At the end of your experiment, rinse the papers with clean water for about 5 seconds to wash off anything that can be removed. This may remove any loosen material.
7. Make a final observation and record the results. Compare each tested sample with original sample that you have saved (control). What percentage of ink is gone by biodegradation?

Experiment 2:

In this experiment you will use soil to test the effect of bacteria on ink. Wear gloves and be careful to prevent contamination when working with soil bacteria.

1. Gather samples of printed paper for test. Choose papers from newspapers, magazines, postal cards, books and other printed material that you can find. Cut two identical small square about 10cm x 10cm from each paper for test. Save one of the squares from each sample as control experiment and do nothing with them. Use the other one for decomposition test.
2. Cover the bottom of an empty fish tank with about four inches of moist soil. Place the test samples on top of the soil. Cover the papers with another five inches of soil. Seal the tank with the plastic wrap and secure with tape. Place the tank in direct sunlight. Unseal the tank after two weeks and observe any changes.
3. At the end of your experiment, rinse the papers with clean water for about 5 seconds to wash off anything that can be removed. This may remove any loosen material.
4. Make a final observation and record the results. Compare each tested sample with original sample that you have saved (control). What percentage of ink is gone by biodegradation?

Experiment 3:

We know that bacteria produce and release enzymes that cause degradation or decomposition. So in this experiment instead of waiting for bacteria to produce enzymes, we use pineapple juice that is a good source of enzyme for our experiment. If pine apple juice be able to decompose ink, we can then expect bacteria to decompose ink as well.

1. Gather samples of printed paper for test. Choose papers from newspapers, magazines, postal cards, books and other printed material that you can find. Cut two identical small square about 10cm x 10cm from each paper for test.
2. Place two identical pieces of each paper in two identical plastic plates. Add 5 ml of tap water on one paper and 5 ml of pineapple juice on the other paper. In this way you will use two plates for each type of ink that you are testing.
3. Cover the plates with plastic or another plate to keep the moisture in.
4. Make daily observations for 7 to 10 days and record your results.
5. At the end of your experiment, rinse the papers with clean water for about 5 seconds to wash off anything that can be removed. This may remove any loosen material.
6. Make a final observation and record the results. Compare each tested sample with original sample that you have saved (control). What percentage of ink is gone by biodegradation?

Experiment 4:

In this experiment you test the liquid ink itself, not a paper printed with ink. You can do this experiment only if you can get sufficient amount of each ink. This process can be changed and adjusted based on the type of ink that you are testing. For start I assume that you are only testing water soluble inks. If you are using an ink that is not water soluble, you will first need to make an emulsion of the ink. You can do that by mixing detergent and ink before adding water. You can also change the amount of ink and the size of containers that you use for your experiment, however such change must be applied to all your test samples.

1. Mix 10mL of each ink sample with 100mL of filtered soil water in a 250mL beaker. You prepare soil water the same way as described in the experiment number 1. Label these beakers with the name of ink and the word “test”.
2. Mix 10mL of each ink sample with 100 ml of distilled water (or tap water) in a 250mL beaker. This will be your control. Label these bottles with the name of ink and the word “control”.
3. Cover the beakers with plastic and place the, next to a window, so they will get enough sunlight.
4. Make daily observations and look for any change in color or appearance of water ink solutions. Note that you are comparing each ink with it’s control. Record the rate of discoloration or precipitation.
5. After 1 to 4 weeks (depending on how much time you have) make your final observation and continue with the experiment as follows.
6. In a clean 600mL beaker, make a solution of 50 grams calcium chloride and 200mL water. Heat the solution on a hot plate to 80ºC. Pore one of the the ink solution samples in the hot calcium chloride solution and stir it for 5 minutes. Then let it cool off and label it with the same label as ink bottle plus the word RESULT.
7. Repeat the above test (step 6) with all ink samples (test and control) in separate beakers.
8. wait until all beakers will precipitate.
9. Make final observation and record your results.

Note: All natural and synthetic resins used in manufacturing inks and paints, precipitate in a solution of calcium carbonate. We are hoping that the bacteria will completely or partially destroy such resins and we will be able to see less resin precipitation in some inks when we compare them with the control of the same ink.

Materials and Equipment:

List of material can be extracted from the experiment section.

Calcium Chloride may be purchased from hardware stores. You may also order it online from MiniScience.com or ChemicalStore.com.

Printing inks are used by print shops. You may ask your local print shop for a small sample; however, you can simply use printed material for their ink sample. For example you may use a newspaper for newspaper ink and use a book or magazine. You may also use different pens and markers for their inks.

Results of Experiment (Observation):

Experiments are often done in series. A series of experiments can be done by changing one variable a different amount each time. A series of experiments is made up of separate experimental “runs.” During each run you make a measurement of how much the variable affected the system under study. For each run, a different amount of change in the variable is used. This produces a different amount of response in the system. You measure this response, or record data, in a table for this purpose. This is considered “raw data” since it has not been processed or interpreted yet. When raw data gets processed mathematically, for example, it becomes results.

Calculations:

No calculation is required for this experiment.

Summary of Results:

Summarize what happened. This can be in the form of a table of processed numerical data, or graphs. It could also be a written statement of what occurred during experiments.

It is from calculations using recorded data that tables and graphs are made. Studying tables and graphs, we can see trends that tell us how different variables cause our observations. Based on these trends, we can draw conclusions about the system under study. These conclusions help us confirm or deny our original hypothesis. Often, mathematical equations can be made from graphs. These equations allow us to predict how a change will affect the system without the need to do additional experiments. Advanced levels of experimental science rely heavily on graphical and mathematical analysis of data. At this level, science becomes even more interesting and powerful.

Conclusion:

Using the trends in your experimental data and your experimental observations, try to answer your original questions. Is your hypothesis correct? Now is the time to pull together what happened, and assess the experiments you did.

Related Questions & Answers:

What you have learned may allow you to answer other questions. Many questions are related. Several new questions may have occurred to you while doing experiments. You may now be able to understand or verify things that you discovered when gathering information for the project. Questions lead to more questions, which lead to additional hypothesis that need to be tested.

Possible Errors:

If you did not observe anything different than what happened with your control, the variable you changed may not affect the system you are investigating. If you did not observe a consistent, reproducible trend in your series of experimental runs there may be experimental errors affecting your results. The first thing to check is how you are making your measurements. Is the measurement method questionable or unreliable? Maybe you are reading a scale incorrectly, or maybe the measuring instrument is working erratically.

If you determine that experimental errors are influencing your results, carefully rethink the design of your experiments. Review each step of the procedure to find sources of potential errors. If possible, have a scientist review the procedure with you. Sometimes the designer of an experiment can miss the obvious.

References:

List of References

http://www.inkworldmagazine.com/guide1.htm