juicy carta

juicy carta

orange pulp biomaterial

Who doesn’t enjoy a freshly squeezed orange juice in the morning? Oranges are very popular, especially the juice of an orange is used a lot. The inspiration for this was the Bar Ristoro la Torre in Don Bosco, Bolzano. A large orange juice press raised the question of what happens to the pulp and the peels.
Due to the sugar content and the fibrous properties of the pulp, which are similar to the cellulose fibres used in paper production, the basic idea was to make paper from it.

The basis of the project was 5 kilograms of oranges, from which juice was first pressed. The remaining pulp and the peels were then put aside for further processing. Half of the orange peels were dried out at 100 degrees Celsius for 9 hours and then processed into granulate. The fresh peels were also processed into granulate.
During the experiment, it turned out that the fibrous pulp without the addition of orange peels was perfectly suitable for a paper-like surface. The haptic properties of this orange paper are particularly impressive.
For a stronger material, it is particularly advisable to mash the pulp together with corn starch and let this mass dry out. In contrast to the fibrous paper, the haptic properties are rather even and clearly more stable but at the same time fragile.

The advantage of this material is clearly that it picks up on the already given properties of fruit pulp and processes them further, transforming food waste into something useful. For in the predominant paper production, trees are still the main resources, which could be significantly reduced through this.