A review of current technologies for the sustainable valorisation of sugarcane bagasse
Yu Matsueda, Elsa Antunes
Abstract
The Australian sugar industry over the last few years has focused heavily on the valorisation of sugarcane bagasse , an abundant lignocellulosic biomass that has the potential to be converted into many valuable chemicals and materials. Despite this, it is currently an under-utilised material that is often burnt inefficiently as a means of disposal. As such, researchers are greatly committed to finding new methods of converting bagasse into higher-value products. These methods include a variety of thermal and biological processes as well as the conversion of bagasse into other biobased materials. However, due to the vast number of applications of sugarcane bagasse , optimal utilisation in terms of economic and environmental sustainability is a major challenge. Therefore, this article provides an overview on the recent advancements in the valorisation of sugarcane bagasse while comparing the feasibility of each process for the Australian sugar industry. For biological processes, high pretreatment costs and long processing times make them economically unviable, while the production of biobased materials require large volumes of water and produce toxic wastes, making them difficult to integrate into sugar mills. For thermal processes, pyrolysis was determined to be a suitable valorisation method due to its fast-processing times, low water usage and the promising applications available for the resulting biochar and bio-oil, which include their potential as a low-cost sugar colour adsorbent and insecticide respectively.