A study published October 15, 2025 in Biotechnology for Sustainable Materials found that nanocellulose films made from tequila agave bagasse reached conductivity up to 23.2 siemens per meter when doped with titanium dioxide and reduced graphene oxide.
The paper was written by Belkis Sulbarán-Rangel of the Universidad de Guadalajara's Centro Universitario de Tonalá, along with Manuel Guadalupe Macias-Tello, María de los Ángeles Vargas-Hernández, Nicolás Haro-Falcón and Edgar Mauricio Santos-Ventura, and carries the DOI 10.1186/s44316-025-00044-z. The agave fiber used in the work came from a named tequila producer, Grupo Internacional de Exportación, S.A., and was converted into nanocellulose using an organosolv extraction method the same research group had described in earlier publications. The trade outlet Bioengineer.org was among the first to summarize the findings for a general audience.
How the film conducts electricity
The researchers prepared two forms of nanocellulose from the bagasse: cellulose nanocrystals, which are short and highly ordered, and cellulose nanofibrils, which are longer and more loosely structured. Each form was combined with titanium dioxide and reduced graphene oxide, a chemically treated form of graphene commonly used to raise conductivity in composite materials. The nanocrystal-based films reached conductivity of up to 23.2 siemens per meter, a standard measure of how easily a material carries electric current, and consistently outperformed the nanofibril-based films. According to the study, the nanofibril films' more amorphous internal structure limited how well current could move through them. The authors concluded that the structural order of the nanocellulose itself, not only the graphene oxide doping, determined how conductive the finished film became.
Where the agave bagasse came from
Bagasse is the fibrous pulp left behind after sugars are extracted from cooked agave piñas during tequila production, and distilleries have generally treated the material as a disposal problem rather than a resource. The bagasse used in this study was supplied by Grupo Internacional de Exportación, S.A., a tequila company, and processed using an organosolv method, a solvent-based pulping process that members of the same research team had applied to agave bagasse in prior studies on cellulose nanocrystals and nanofibers. The authors present the project as part of a broader effort to find higher-value uses for agro-industrial waste streams, framing the valorization of residues like agave bagasse as a lower-impact alternative for producing functional materials.
What the study does not yet show
Bioengineer.org reported that despite the conductivity results, the films have not yet been tested in real device prototypes, a limitation the authors themselves acknowledged. The outlet also reported that further research is necessary to confirm practical applicability and long-term performance before the material could be considered for uses such as flexible electronics, sensors or energy storage. The published paper does not report how the films hold up under repeated flexing, how they respond to humidity over time, or what it would cost to scale the organosolv extraction process beyond laboratory quantities, so durability and production economics remain open questions.
What this means
This is laboratory-stage materials science, not a tequila industry initiative, and no bottle in Tequila Watch's database is tied to the research or the companies involved. What is worth watching is whether a distillery moves from supplying bagasse as a research input to funding bagasse valorization at scale, given how much of the fibrous residue the industry generates every harvest and how little use it has historically found for it.