Industrial Crops and Products 6 (1997) 229 232

Sweet sorghum bagasse: A raw material for the production of

chemical paper pulp.
Effect of depithing

Larbi Belayachi, Michel Delmas *

Institut National Polytechnique, Ecole Nationale Superieure de Chimie de Toulouse, Unite de Recherche, 118, Route de Narbonne,
31077 Toulouse Cedex, France

Received 1 May 1996; accepted 23 September 1996

Abstract

Sweet sorghum bagasse is used to manufacture chemical pulp. The quality of the pulp obtained is excellent for the
paper industry. Sweet sorghum can be considered as a major raw material for the paper industry. These pulps can
be used in sectors usually restricted to superior chemical pulps such as those obtained from soft wood. 1997
Elsevier Science B.V.

Keywords: Sweet sorghum; Soda-anthraquinone; Physical and mechanical properties

1. Introduction with non-polluting chemical agents such as alka-

The use of fibers from plants such as alfa,
kenaf, linen, cereal straw, sugarcane bagasse
and sorghum as a complement in manufactur-
ing of papers of different qualities is well
known Ray et al., 1990; Delmas and Gaset,
1991; Belayachi and Delmas, 1995. The paper
pulps obtained from annual plants are bleached
* Corresponding author.
line oxygen, hydrogen peroxide, ozone and
also with enzymatic methods Delopez et al.,
1996; Pham Phuong et al., 1995; Bonnevie et al.,
1993.
This study is focused on sweet sorghum
bagasse which, to our knowledge, has not been
thoroughly investigated in the field of paper
manufacturing. This paper reports a comparative
study on the raw and depithed fibrous portion
used as an original resource for paper manu-
facturing.

0926-6690/97/$17.00 1997 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

PII S 0 9 2 6 - 6 6 9 0 ( 9 7 ) 0 0 0 1 2 - 5
230 L. Belayachi, M. Delmas / Industrial Crops and Products 6 (1997) 229232

2. Materials and methods (soda-AQ) process. The pieces of depithed and

2.1. Raw material
The plant material used in this study is sweet
sorghum from the Tracy variety called Sorghum
6ulgare saccharatum, which belongs to the Sor-
ghum bicolor L Moench genus. It is characterized
by a short vegetative cycle (4 5 months). It was
sowed in May in the Gard region (France) and
harvested at the end of October.
Sweet sorghum stems were chemically analyzed
to determine their chemical constituents. After
extraction in hot water, alkali-water (1% NaOH),
alcohol-benzene mixture, incineration and ADF/
NDF analysis, the results obtained are reported in
Table 1.
extracted bagasse were impregnated with a soda-
AQ solution at 160C over 20 min. Cooking was
performed in a 1.15 l rotating digester made of
stainless steel and electrically heated. The pulp
obtained was pressed, washed, defibrated, sorted
and dewatered.
The unbleached pulp had a dryness ranging
between 30 and 34%. It was then refined in a
Lampen refiner at 3% consistency. The mechani-
cal characteristics of the paper sheets are given at
Table 1
Fibre characteristics of sweet sorghum
Species origin Sweet sorghum
E1 E2

2.2. Sweet sorghum depithing Ash 1.5 2.7

Silica 0.6 0.5
Soluble in hot water 25.3 43.8
Sweet sorghum is manually depithed. The 1% NaOH 52.1 63.1
leaves and some pith with very few residual fibers Alcohol-benzene 11.4 24
are separated from the exploitable fibrous por- Cellulose 48.8 45
tion. After depithing, an average of 51% fibrous Pentasans 20.2 16.7
matter is obtained which after pulping can be Holocellulose 68 61.6
Lignin 16 14.9
used for paper manufacturing (E1), 19% pith, and
30% leaves. The results obtained after the dep- E1: Depithed and extracted bagasse.
ithing of sweet sorghum can be transposed to the E2: Extracted bagasse.
industrial scale.
Table 2
Comparison of the physico-chemical characteristics of E1 and
2.3. Water extraction of depithed sweet sorghum E2 pulps on the effect of depithing
bagasse
E1 E2
The depithed sweet sorghum bagasse is cut into
pieces of 24 cm. These pieces are then intro- k Number 10.3 9.4
Yield (%) 43.0 31.7
duced into a 4.5 l autoclave heated by an oil bath. Uncooked materials (%) 0 0
The operating conditions are: A liquid/raw-mat- Residual soda (g l1) 6.78 7.23
erial ratio of eight relative to dry matter and a Degree of polymerization 1795 1674
temperature of 80C for 1 h. The extracted sam- Brightness (ISO) 42.2 33.5
ples are recovered, washed with distilled water Burst index (kPa m2 g1) 9.17 8.05
Tear index100 (mN m2 g1) 726 625
and dried in open air. Breaking length (km) 12.85 12.65
Wet Ro (m) 13705 13870
Dry Ro (m) 16000 15600
3. Pulping of the depithed and water extracted Double folds (600 g) 690 560
bagasse by the soda-anthraquinone process Apparent density (g cm3) 0.732 0.670
Soda concentration (%) 20 24

A series of trials was performed to produce E1: Depithed and extracted bagasse.
chemical paper pulp by the soda-anthraquinone E2: Extracted bagasse.
 L. Belayachi, M. Delmas / Industrial Crops and Products 6 (1997) 229232 231

Table 3
Comparison of the physico-chemical characteristics of sweet sorghum pulp with different chemical pulps from several plant species

E1 E2 E3 E4 E5

k Number 10.3 10.6 14

Yield (%) 43.0 51.8 42.80 45-46 49.2
Burst index (kPa g1 m2) 9.17 7.77 3.23 4.10 5.80
Tear index100 (mN g1 m2) 726 620 430 423 120
Breaking length (km) 12.85 12.86 9.050 7.600 8.900
Bulk (cm3 g1) 1.78 1.45 1.35
Drainability (SR) 40 41 40

E1: Depithed and extracted sweet sorghum bagasse, cooking soda-anthraquinone process Belayachi and Delmas, 1995
E2: Fiber Sorghum manually depithed, Kraft process (R. Angelier, personal communication).
E3: Forage sorghum bicolor sudan, soda-AQ process Khristova and Gabir, 1990.
E4: Wheat straw pulp, soda-AQ process Hamilton and Leopold, 1987.
E5: Maritime pine, Kraft process Valette and Dechoudens, 1989.

40SR. The unbleached pulp was characterized
according to the previously reported standards
Belayachi and Delmas, 1995
4. Results and discussion
The cooking method was choosen to rapidly
and objectively assess the industrial potential of
sweet sorghum fibers based on the results ob-
tained. Experiments were performed to optimize
the cooking conditions Belayachi and Delmas,
1995. In this report, the focus was made on the
interest of depithing. A comparative cooking was
realized between samples E1 (depithed and ex-
tracted bagasse) and E2 (extracted bagasse) to
show the impact of depithing on the physico-
chemical characteristics of the final pulps.
The operating conditions were: A 5:1 liq-
uid:raw-material ratio, at 155C, with 0.1% an-
thraquinone for 20 min at a constant level (a 24%
concentration of alkali/soda is sufficient to per-
form a cooking for the E2 sample). Table 2 gives
the unbleached pulp yields of different samples
(E1 and E2) obtained with the soda-AQ processs.
This table also gives their physico-chemical char-
acteristics.
The values showed that, compared to the E1
sample, there was a 26.3% decrease in the un-
bleached pulp yield, a nine point loss in the
brightness (ISO) and a slight decrease in the me-
chanical characteristics for the E2 sample. This
result was essentially due to the quantity of
residual soluble products which will contribute
to the decrease in the brightness degree through
the degradation products.
Both samples had the same k number. The
polymerization degree was higher in E1. In-
versely, the soda concentration used increased
relative to dry matter by 20% in E2. Such in-
crease was due to an overconsumption of soda
by the pith found in the bagasse and by the
residual reducing sugars found in E2. Similar re-
sults on the consumption of soda by the pith
and its influence on the mechanical and optical
characteristics were reported by numerous au-
thors Bonnevie et al., 1993; Khristova and
Gabir, 1990.
The depithing of sweet sorghum bagasse re-
duced the soda requirement to 20% compared to
E2, slightly improved the pulp yield and in-
creased the brightness of the unbleached pulps.
One can assume that depithing is not so impor-
tant for the bagasse of sweet sorghum as it is
for fiber sorghum. This result is very important
in terms of industrial development. This means
that sweet sorghum produces two raw materials
of very high quality: The sugar syrup and the
fibers.
Sweet sorghum pulp was compared with dif-
ferent chemical pulps from several plant species.
The results reported in Table 3 highlight the
excellent quality of E1 pulp obtained with the
soda-AQ process.
232 L. Belayachi, M. Delmas / Industrial Crops and Products 6 (1997) 229232
Its mechanical characteristics are similar to
those of manually depithed fiber sorghum chemi-
cal pulps; better than those of mechanically dep-
ithed fiber sorghum pulps and those of forage
sorghum, wheat straw, eucalyptus and maritime
pine.
The pulp yield of sweet sorghum remains
slightly lower than that of the pulp of fiber sor-
ghum, eucalyptus, maritime pine and similar to
that of straw and forage sorghum pulp.
This result is very important since the objective
of this work is to demonstrate the remarkable
properties of sweet sorghum bagasse for the paper
industry.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Dr Ghislain
Gosse for the samples of sweet sorghum he pro-
vided and his helpful scientific comments on the
subject. They would also like to express their
gratitude to the Commission of the European
Community for the financial support granted to
complete this study (Contract Air CT 920041).
. .
References
Belayachi, L., Delmas, M., 1995. Sweet sorghum: A quality raw
material for the manufacturing of chemical paper pulp.
Biomass and Bioenergy 8 (6), 411 417.
Bonnevie, M., Abdennadher, M. and Delmas, M., 1993. French
patent no. 2684697.
Delmas, M. and Gaset, A., 1991. A new industrial crop network
for the production of animal food, sugars and derivatives
and paper pulps. Sixth EEC Conference on Biomass for
Energy, Industry and Environment, Elsevier, London, pp.
1269 1275.
Delopez, S., Tissot, M., Delmas, T., 1996. Integrated Cereal
staw valorization by an alkaline pre-extraction of hemicellu-
lose prior to soda anthraquinone pulping case of barley
straw. Biomass Bioenergy 10 (4), 201 211.
Hamilton, F. and Leopold, B., 1987. Pulp and paper manufac-
ture. Vol. 3: Secondary Fibers and Non-wood Pulping.
Kocurek, M.J., (Ed.), Tappi Press, Atlanta, USA.
Khristova, P., Gabir, S., 1990. Soda-anthraquinone pulping of
Sorghum stalks. Biological Wastes 33, 243 250.
Pham Phuong, L., Alric, I., Delmas, M., 1995. Incorporation
of pulp-IIB in Totally Chlorine Free (TCF) bleach sequences
using ozone and hydrogen peroxide. Appita. J. 48, 213 217.
Ray, A.K., Bonsal, M.C., Rao, N.J. and Mohanty, B., 1990.
New pulping processes for non-conventional raw materials.
An economic question. Non-wood plant fiber pulping. Prog.
Rep. No. 20, pp. 177 189.
Valette, P. and Dechoudens, C., 1989. Le bois, la pate, le papier.
Centre Technique de lIndustrie des papiers, Cartons et
celluloses.