What is Bagasse? Get Everything about Bagasse

What is bagasse? What is bagasse made of? In fact, bagasse products can be found everywhere in daily life, but fortunately they are biodegradable. This guide will tell you everything there is to know about bagasse.

What is bagasse?

Bagasse is the fibrous material left over from crushing the stalks of sugar cane or sorghum to extract the juice. From the biological perspective, bagasse is a solid byproduct of the extraction of liquid components from plants.

Bagasse considered garbage in some countries and regions, but in fact, it can be used as biofuel, be used to produce heat and electricity.

Bagasse is also the raw material of paper pulp and some building applications.

What is bagasse made of?

Originally, the material left behind after crushing olive palm kernels and grapes was called “bagasse”. Through the vicissitudes of history and the expansion of product applications, today, bagasse is usually referred to as a by-product of sugarcane.

Sugarcane bagasse can be found anywhere in a sugar mill, or there are suppliers that specialize in bagasse. After juice extraction, crushing, and drying, bagasse is finally formed – a widely used raw material.

Advantages of bagasse as a raw material

Bagasse, as a raw material for finished products, is not only eco-friendly and biodegradable, easy access is also one of the advantages that cannot be ignored.

Sugarcane has a wide distribution all over the world, and its maturity period is less than one year. Annual full time sugarcane production is 1.9 billion tons, resulting in nearly 1 billion tons of bagasse.

Briefly summarize the advantages of bagasse:

• Eco friendly
• Renewable
• Easy to obtain
• No felling

What is Bagasse paper pulp?

Bagasse pulp is paper pulp formed by peeling, cooking and washing sugarcane by machinery. It can be used to produce paper, eco bagasse packaging, bagasse tableware such as bagasse plates, bagasse cups and so on.

The silicon content of bagasse is lower than other straw fibers, which determines that bagasse pulping process is more mature and simple.

How are bagasse pulp produced?

The following are the main components of bagasse:

• The content of cellulose is generally 45–55%, which is higher than that of straw and comparable to that of wood;
• Hemicellulose content: 20%-25%
• Lignin content is about 20%, higher than straw, lower than wood;
• Silicon content is lower than straw and higher than wood.

This results in bagasse pulp being easy to cook and high pulping efficiency.

How Ecoure pulped bagasse for the production of bagasse plates, bowls, cups, and other tableware?

Bagasse pulp cooking

Bagasse pulp is cooked by alkaline continuous cooking and cold blowing. The equipment adopts continuous tube type cooking device and air blowing tank.

• It can reduce cooking time, alkali and steam consumption;
• The yield of pulp was 5% higher than that of other processes;
• The quality of bagasse pulp was uniform and the strength was high

Bagasse pulp screening

Ecoure has abandoned the traditional open low concentration screening system and adopted the medium concentration block screening system. It greatly improved the screening level, and save water, reduce production costs.

On the other hand, reduce waste water and improve the quality of bagasse pulp. 

Bagasse pulp bleaching

Bagasse pulp is easy to bleach, and most paper pulp or paper plate manufacturers use CEH bleaching to bleach bagasse pulp to 75%-85% ISO. However, the involvement of chlorine in this process is not conducive to the healthy development of products and the environment. 

Ecoure used chlorine-free bleaching method, which produced less pollutants and less damage to bagasse fibers. This approach will gradually become mainstream.

Multiple application scenarios

Now we know the properties of bagasse plates:

• Easy to use, suitable for any occasion
• Stronger than paper plates
• Waterproof and oil proof
• No plastic, no coating or wax
• Microwavable safe and non-toxic
• Serve hot and cold food
• Compostable

Sturdy bagasse plates will not fall apart even when filled with your delicious meal, can provide more delicious, succulent and creamy food without leaking.

Bagasse plates are suitable for almost all occasions: daily meals, restaurant, takeout orders, birthday parties, family gatherings, Thanksgiving or Christmas dinners, weddings, barbecues, camping, etc. Therefore commonly used by food package distributors and wholesalers around the world.

Bagasse Products – what bagasse used for?

At present, besides being used as biofuel, the production of eco-friendly products is the most common use of bagasse.

Bagasse is compostable, and sugarcane products eventually degrade naturally to form compost. There is no doubt that being used to produce eco-friendly products is a more beneficial application.

The following are common applications of bagasse:

• Biofuels
• Building board raw materials
• Livestock feed
• Eco-friendly packaging
• Eco-friendly cosmetic container
• Compostable tableware
• Takeout food containers
• Paper cups
• Straw
• Coffee cup and tray
• Egg tray
• Cartons
• More…

Environmental impact

To be sure, bagasse products are good for the environment.

Bagasse products are compostable and, in the right environment, they biodegrade in 90 days. That’s far less than the centuries it takes for plastic products to biodegrade. When compostable products biodegrade, they will leave behind nutrients needed by the soil.

In addition, it avoids sugarcane burning, reduces carbon dioxide emissions, which is of great significance to achieve zero carbon emissions globally.

Market and Prospects of Bagasse

Material advantage

Bagasse is a treasure house of natural polymer material green chemicals. Moreover, bagasse has obvious advantage as biomass raw material:

1. Source concentration
2. Large capacity
3. Renewable
4. Easy to obtain
5. Easy to transport

Bagasse composition is relatively stable and uniform in nature, so it can be used in the production of high value-added products, which can meet the requirements of raw material concentration, continuity and uniformity required by industrialization.

Product Prospect

Bagasse eco packaging bag, and bagasse tableware in the global trade has been on the rise.

Whether wholesalers, importers, brands, retailers, or Amazon store, the bagasse tableware, such as bagasse plate sales are crazy.

Sustainable

Genuine bagasse products do not require any misleading labels such as biodegradable. It can be composted both at home and in industry. The best case scenario is that these products end up in your home compost, or they will be composted in a commercial/industrial composting facility.

In either case, sustainability will be promoted.