Determination of calcium carbonate and styrene-butadiene latex content in the coating layer of coated paper

The surface infrared spectra of coated paper with different levels of calcium carbonate and SB-latex in the coating layer were measured using ATR-FTIR. The relations between different levels of CaCO3 and SB-latex and their respective characteristic peak areas were then established. The results show that the general regression neural network (GRNN) model can be used to estimate the CaCO3 and SB-latex contents in coatings of coated papers. The maximum errors for calcium carbonate and SB-latex were only 3.32% and 3.39%, respectively, and occurred under conditions that are at the extreme of what might be encountered in an actual production facility.