Eco-friendly bleaching of sugarcane bagasse with crude xylanase and pectinase enzymes to reduce the bleaching effluent toxicity

Bio-bleaching effect on bagasse pulp using xylano-pectinolytic enzymes produced by a bacterial species was studied in order to evaluate the potential of these enzymes in paper industry. In this study, action of enzymes was maximum with xylanase/pectinase dose 7/1.75 IU/g, pulp consistency 1:12.5 g/L, pH 8.5, temperature 50° C and 180 min of treatment time. Under the optimized bio-bleaching conditions, removal of reducing sugars (6.15±0.05 mg/L), brightness (16.08%), whiteness (25.54%) and release of chromophores (hydrophobic and phenolic compounds and lignin impurities) were maximum, along with decrease in kappa number (26.28%), and yellowness (27.88%) values were obtained. Improvement in the various physical properties like breaking length (10.28%), burst index (29.55%), tear index (5.02%), double fold (14.89%), Gurley porosity (15%) and viscosity (8.6%), along with the reduction of chlorine dioxide dose by 27%, was also observed. There is also reduction in COD and BOD values of bio-bleached effluents by 27.62% and 20.52%, respectively. This is the first report on bio-bleaching of bagasse pulp using xylano-pectinolytic enzymes.