Scientists have created reusable eco-paper from sunflower pollen

Paper recycling is good, but reusable is better. The new paper based on sunflower pollen is made so that it can be printed on it and then cleaned with special chemicals. The material was developed at the Nanyang Technological University of Singapore.

The method is similar to soap production — the process begins with the removal of the hard outer shell from pollen grains with potassium hydroxide. A gel is obtained from the soft inner substance, which is purified in deionized water. Then the gel is poured into a flat mold and left to dry. After that, the 0.03 mm thick sheet is treated with acetic acid to make it resistant to moisture.

This paper is more flexible and transparent than traditional paper, but it can also be passed through a conventional laser printer and printed with toner. The drawing will remain intact, even if you glue and tear off the sticky tape to it or put it in water. At the same time, if the sheet is immersed in an alkaline solution and rubbed, the gel will swell, and the toner will collapse and peel off. Then the clean paper is placed in ethanol for five minutes so that the gel returns to its previous state, after which it is dried in air and re-treated with acetic acid. Then you can print on paper again without losing the integrity or quality of images up to eight times per sheet.

The best part is that instead of cutting down trees, paper material can be collected from sunflower plantations or plants such as camellia and lotus. The process of producing and erasing images can be seen in the following video.