Production and determination of properties of ethanol from mango and orange peels

Abstract

The use of fossil fuels in IC engines in vehicles and industries has been identified as the leading cause of pollution, especially in urban areas where the traffic is usually heavy and industries are situated. In addition to air pollution which has its attendant health risks, the emission of greenhouse gases from the combustion of fossil fuels has been identified as one of the leading causes of climate change. The aforementioned reasons coupled with the fact that fossil fuels are exhaustible resources have necessitated the search for alternative eco-friendlier and sustainable fuels. The utilization of agricultural waste such as (mango and orange) peels to produce bioethanol proves to be a better alternative than the use of food crops. In this research, enzymatic scarification of yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) was used to produce bioethanol from samples of mango and orange peels and their properties were compared with those of standard pure (98%) anhydrous ethanol. ASTM standards were used as comparative measures of the fuel properties that derived from bioethanol. It was found that the bioethanol concentration for the two samples were 19.98% for sample A and 19.17% for sample B and the results also show a good agreement as analysed by (ANOVA).