Though the growing demand for wood in the paper industry, has compelled the sector to turn from dwindling forests to other sources of raw materials — like cereal straw, reeds, bamboo or sugar-cane bagasse – the environment did not get its due justice!
Whatever the raw material used, paper pulp has to undergo the same environment polluting processing stages of delignification and bleaching for turning it into high-strength and durable paper. In some countries the involved chemical process needs the use of chlorine — dangerous for both health and the environment.
So, as a solution to this, IRD and INRA research scientists have developed an alternative, biologically based, solution. It is a non-polluting process.
Not just that! At the same time, it also yields a delignifying enzyme — laccase — by culturing a filamentous fungus and recycling the sugar-cane bagasse effectively.
The fungus — Pycnoporus cinnabarinus — produces laccase naturally, which breaks down the lignin in the fibres of bagasse, thus, transforming this waste product into paper pulp, after mechanical refining.
