Conclusion

Cellulose is a biopolymer widely exploited in numerous applications for the paper and chemical industries (fibers, cellulose-derived polymers, biofuels), but paper has always been by far the most common and abundant cellulose product, and this is also true today in the digital age. As an everyday consumer material, paper is also a material with great development potential. The need, on the one hand, to manufacture high-performance papers for very specific applications and, on the other hand, to preserve the heritage of our civilizations on paper, requires a better understanding of its long-term physical and chemical behavior.

While the question of artificial ageing of paper has been well studied, the question of natural ageing is still largely open, since it is so difficult to model faithfully the changes that take place under ambient conditions, and which can take...