Water Barrier Polysaccharides from Sugarcane Bagasse

The present study showed a simple way of isolation of hemicelluloses with different degree of branching, molar mass, functional groups, varying lignin content from sugarcane bagasse and demonstrated a significant water barrier property on cardboard. The hemicellulosic polysaccharides from sugarcane bagasse was extracted sequentially with steam treatment followed by alkali and were characterized by chemical methods, SEC-MALLS, FT-IR and 13C NMR. While alkaline peroxide extraction produced mostly linear arabinoxylans with varied amounts of lignin, the hemicellulose from steam pre-treatment was discovered to contain gluco-arabinoxylans. On cardboard, these high-lignin arabinoxylans were tested for water barrier qualities in preparation for usage as food packaging materials. Due to lignin content, these hemicelluloses were found to increase the water barrier properties of the cardboard. Furthermore, the novel coating material shows promising properties for the development of sustainable barrier material in fibre-based packaging material to replace oil-based barriers.