Abstract
In this study ethanol was produced without using expensive commercial enzymes from sugarcane bagasse. Alkali pretreatment was used to prepare biomass before enzymatic hydrolysis. The comparison between NaOH, KOH and Ca(OH)_2 revealed that NaOH has been more effective on bagasse structure. The required enzymes for biomass hydrolysis were produced by bagasse solid state fermentation using three fungi: Trichoderma longibrachiatum, T. reesei and Aspergillus niger. Results indicated enzyme solution produced by A. niger has functioned better than the other two in cellulose conversion during sole hydrolysis. Ethanol was produced by simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF) with on-site prepared crude enzyme solutions and yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Here, T. longibrachiatum had the best performance in ethanol production. To evaluate this procedure, SSF of pretreated bagasse applying Celluclast 1.5L by Novozymes was also investigated. The yield of ethanol production by commercial enzyme and T. longibrac hiatum enzyme solution were 81% and 52.5% respectively.
Highlights
In the last few decades, bioethanol has assumed a very important place among renewable fuel resources and its market is continuously expanding
Alkali pretreatments essentially aim at delignification while the most studied ones, i.e. acid pretreatments have the effect of hydrolysis as well
The results showed that there is no relationship between cellulase standard activity of enzyme solutions and their ability to hydrolyze lignocellulosic biomass
Summary
In the last few decades, bioethanol has assumed a very important place among renewable fuel resources and its market is continuously expanding. Global warming, and the future of oil production are amongst the major motivations leading to public and private interest in developing ethanol production as an additive or alternative to oil. This is true especially when the oil peak is estimated to reach sometime between 1996 and 2035 [1]. Lignocellulosic biomass (LB) is mainly composed of two polymeric carbohydrates: cellulose and hemicellulose. Lignin, another constituent of LB, acts as a “skin” and prevents easy access to cellulose. One of the major difficulties with SSF method is the difference between the optimum temperature
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