Preparing tea filter papers with High air permeability from jute fibers for fast leaching

•Preparing tea filter papers with high air permeability from jute fibers.•Improving the air permeability by using a cellulose solvent.•Analysis on the yield, morphologies and the properties of modified fibers.•Assessment on the quality and safety of products. Tea bags are tea packaged by tea filter papers that are made of wood pulp adding minor portion of synthetic fibers commonly. To obtain fast leaching tea bags and protect environment, we develop a new method containing five steps of cutting, cooking, bleaching, modification and hand-sheets to prepare tea filter papers with high air permeability from jute fibers. The results are: the rough pulp fibers yield (Wt%) 58.62% of jute fibers, the yield of bleaching fibers is 93.60% of rough pulp fibers, and the yield of the modified fibers is 74.40% of bleaching fibers. Hence, the final yield of the modified fibers is 40.82% of jute fibers. The air permeability values of the filter papers made of the modified fibers are 36.19–124.71 times of that making from the un-modified fibers. The tea filter papers made of the modified fibers are strong enough to be soaked in hot water and have enough air permeability for fast leaching. Therefore, jute fibers can be used as an alternative material to generate tea filter papers.