Conservation Science

Chapter 3 Paper

VINCENT DANIELS

Conservation Department, Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore,
London SW7 2EU, UK

1 THE CONSTITUENTS OF PAPER

1.1 Fibres

Everyone can recognise a piece of paper when they see one, but it is more diffi-
cult to definewhat paper is. Although paper can be made from synthetic fibres,
the vast majority of paper is, and had been, made from cellulose fibres. The
pages of this book contain cellulose fibres derived from wood. Plants contain
fibres made of a carbohydrate polymer called cellulose. Not all parts of plants
contain cellulose but it still makes up about a third of the mass of the higher
plants and is the most abundant biopolymer on earth. Both starch and cellulose
may be thought of as polymers of glucose, however, the cellulose molecule is
different from that of starch because the glucose molecules (strictly speaking
anhydroglucose) are linked together in a different way, and the repeating unit
in cellulose is the dimer cellobiose. A cellulose molecule is shown in Figure 1.
The link between the rings is called a glycosidic linkage.

O

H OH

HO

HO

H

H

HO

OH

H

HO

H

H

H

OH

O

H OH

HO O

H

H

H

H

OH

O O

H

OH

OH

H O

H

H

H

OH

H

H

H

OOH

n

Figure 1Structure of cellulose