Abstract
Bioethanol technology represents an important scientific research area because of the high market value and wide availability of its primary and by-products. Worldwide interest in utilizing bioethanol as a renewable and sustainable energy source has significantly increased in the last few years due to limited reserves of fossil fuels and concerns about climate change. Therefore, improvement of the bioethanol production process is a priority research field at the international scale, due to both economic and environmental reasons. The aim of this study was to optimize production of bioethanol from soybean molasses based media using response surface methodology. Three different strains of the yeast Saccharomices cerevisiae, commercially available in dried form, were used as production microorganisms, and the best results were obtained by using dried baker?s yeast. The results of optimization of alcoholic fermentation using dried baker?s yeast indicate that the highest value of the overall desirability function (0.945) is obtained when the initial sugar content is 18.10 % (w/v) at the fermentation time of 48.00 h. At these conditions the model predicts that bioethanol concentration is 8.40 % (v/v), yeast cell number 2.21?108 cells/mL and the residual sugar content is 0.35 % (w/v).
Highlights
The greatest challenges for society nowadays are to meet the growing demand for energy in a sustainable manner [1]
The choice of the raw material to be used for bioethanol production depends on the geographical area and conditions of agricultural production, which can vary from season to season [5]
In order to optimize the initial sugar concentration and fermentation time for bioethanol production by different strains of Saccharomices cerevisiae on soybean molasses - based media, experiments were performed in triplicate and under identical conditions
Summary
The greatest challenges for society nowadays are to meet the growing demand for energy in a sustainable manner [1]. A wide range of raw materials can be used, such as sugar-based (sugar beet or sugarcane juice and molasses), starch-based (corn and wheat) and cellulosic (bagasse and wood) resources. Sugar-based raw materials contain fermentable sugars that can be readily utilized, representing an ideal substrate for bioethanol production, due to the fact that starch and cellulosic substances need to be pre-treated before they can be converted into fermentable sugars [6]. All commercially produced bioethanol is made from sugarcane and corn, but these two raw materials are not sufficient to replace huge amounts of conventional fuels currently consumed as well as to meet the rising demand for bioethanol, which is why it is important to search for new bioethanol raw materials [2]. The alcoholic fermentation process is well known, but production costs remain the key obstacle for a
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