Material Exploration of Rice Straw Pulp

Abstract

Rice straw is currently an agricultural waste that is often only handled by burning it in rice fields, while its chemical composition, comprising cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin, is comparable to that of commonly used materials such as wood and bamboo. Rice straw is abundant and has been extensively researched as a base material for pulp-based products; however, research to date has primarily employed wood pulp manufacturing techniques to treat rice straw. An exploration of rice straw as a unique material may offer valuable insights into rice straw research. The research method used is the design thinking methods for research operation with the following stages: 1) Empathize to explore various insights on rice straw, 2) Define to identify problems by multiple experimentations of rice straw processing, 3) Ideate in the form of stage of analyzing experiment results, 4) Producing various prototype iterations, and 5) Testing the degradability of the prototype samples. This research can contribute by providing recommendations for utilizing rice straw agricultural waste as pulp products for home industries and farmers' union business units.