Muscat: A Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) student won silver medal for his innovative idea of producing paper from date palm leaves at the Third International Innovation Fair of the Middle East, hosted by the Kuwait Science Club earlier this month, according to a press release from SQU on Saturday.
Mustafa Salim Abdullah Barami, an undergraduate student in the Chemistry Department of the College of Science, came up with the innovation of using date palm leaves, which is generally avoided as a waste material, for producing paper pulp.
Commenting on his innovative idea, Mustafa said that the date palm population in the GCC countries is around 100 million which is capable of producing three million tonnes of palm leaves annually.
"The process of paper making from palm leaves is techno-economically more acceptable. Applying this project in the GCC region can contribute to about one per cent of the world production of paper which is considered as a good share and it will be enough to supply about half of our local need of paper," he said.
Abandoning date palm leaves causes several environmental issues as decomposition of the leaves results in the emission of carbon dioxide and other unwanted gases into the atmosphere.
The idea of Mustafa is to utilise this waste material for producing a useful thing such as paper products including printing paper, tissue paper, envelopes, paper bags and even cartons. Replacing plastic bags with paper bags helps reduce plastic pollution.
Mustafa said that date palm leaf, a sustainable agri-residue is an excellent raw material for making pulp and paper of various grades due to the presence of cellulose content in it.
"We have done laboratory tests producing different qualities of paper from date palms. Our plan is to do the economical study and scale it up to take it up for commercialisation. I would extent my thanks to Dr. Al Saeed Al Shafi of Chemistry Department who supervised me in this project," he said.
