Sugarcane bagasse is the secondary product of sugarcane. It is produced by the sugarcane processing. The sugar factory can produce over one hundred million tons bagasse annually. As one of the cheaper material of energy resource, the sugarcane requires less crop area. In fact, sugarcane bagasse is a perfect material for paper and pulp production, and sugarcane bagasse pulp making is wide-applicable just like wood pulp, bamboo pulp, and reed pulp.
More about sugarcane bagasse
- fiber property of sugarcane bagasse
Compared to the wood fiber, the bagasse fiber has similar length, but smaller fiber wall cavity. Among all grass wood fiber materials, bagasse fiber has a longer length, wider width, and smallest wall cavity. In general, when the fiber length is less than 45, this kind of fiber loses the value of papermaking because of the lack of felt properties and lower strength.
- producing area of sugarcane bagasse
Because the growth characteristic of sugarcane, it’s producing area is mostly in the tropical and subtropical area, such as Brazil, Columbia, Cuba, Mexico, Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, India, and China.
- applications of sugarcane bagasse
The sugarcane bagasse has a lot of applications, for example, some animal factories use the bagasse to make feed pellets. Due to the refinery can improve the performance of sugar, and will produce some sugarcane bagasse, the bagasse often be used as the fuel for the factory. What’s more, the bagasse is used as the waste that has bad influence on the environment. Like we mentioned above, the producing area of sugarcane focus the developed countries, they are lack of wood resource, and the economy is relatively backward, the sugarcane bagasse usually can be applied to paper and pulp factory.
History of sugarcane bagasse pulp
In 1925, the first bagasse paper was made in Taiwan. Before that, the study of bagasse papermaking is ended with failure. In 1938, the first chemical bagasse pulp mill was founded, and the daily capacity reached 60 tons. After that, a number of sugar producers start to use the bagasse to make paper and pulp. According to the data shown, there were 96 bagasse pulp and paper mills in 1990, their annual output reaches 2,500,000 tons and takes 1.4% of worldwide pulp output.
Benefits of bagasse pulp
- Natural concentration of raw material is suitable for build large-scale paper and pulp mill. Traditional straw fiber materials for paper making are limited by the dispersed resource and high cost of collection and transportation. So the scale and benefit of the enterprise is greatly restricted. Bagasse is a kind of non-wood fiber belongs to the straw fiber. Differ from the common straw fibers, the bagasse is the by-product of Sugarcane, which is always concentrated. It uses the materials on spot without transportation.
- The combination of sugar mill and paper mill. The grinding season of sugar mill usually has 3-4 months a year. After the grinding season, the sugar mill will enter the inactivity period, the equipment and labor are wasted and affects the economic benefit of the sugar mill. If combine the sugar mill and paper pulp mill together, this shortness caused by seasonal limitation can be avoided effectively and increase the competitiveness.
- Good economic benefits. The economic results of bagasse pulp making mainly benefit from the low price of sugarcane bagasse. According to the data, use the waste bagasse to make pulp, one-ton sugarcane bagasse pulp can save cost about 600 yuan. A paper and pulp mill with annual output of 100,000 tons can save 60 million yuan.
- Suitable for toilet paper making. The toilet paper has features of safe, healthy, soft and hydrophilic. The secondary fiber like waste paper cannot be applied to toilet paper making. Common materials for toilet paper include wood pulp, cotton pulp, bamboo pulp, bagasse pulp and other straw pulp. Proper fiber composition is the precondition of toilet paper manufacture, long fiber makes the paper strong and short fiber make the paper soft. Bagasse fiber has a large width-radius ratio, which decides the bagasse paper is soft. Besides, the fiber wall cavity is smallest among all kinds of fiber, so the bagasse paper has strong hygroscopic property. However, the bagasse pulp has lower wet strength compared with the wood pulp and cotton pulp. In real pulp processing, generally, add 5-30% wood pulp into bagasse pulp to improve the wet strength.
The shortness of bagasse pulp
Due to the limitation of depithing technology, the bagasse has a lower depith ratio. The bagasse contains too much parenchyma cell will affect the drainability of paper, and bagasse pulp cannot be applied to the high-speed paper machine. Nowadays, the high-powered depithing machine controls the depith ratio lower than 10% of bagasse. The wet method stocking prevents producing the rotten bagasse. Meanwhile, parenchyma cell enters into the anaerobic sewage treatment stage with spray water together, which decrease the parenchyma cell content of bagasse. In recent years, continuous cooking applies for bagasse pulp production, the wet method of depithing minimizes the content of parenchyma cell. Therefore, it is possible for bagasse pulp to apply for the high-speed paper machine.
CNBM paper and pulp is specialized in design various pulp production lines, such as wood pulp process, bamboo pulp process, reed pulp process, straw pulp process, etc. We also provide single equipment for the chemical pulping process including pulp digester, vacuum drum washer, twin roll press, and so on.
