Sugar and Bioethanol Production from Oil Palm Trunk (OPT)

Abstract

Various types of carbohydrate-rich plants with several methods have been experimented to produce sugar and bioethanol. Usually, sugar and bioethanol are yielded by fermentation process synthesized from cellulosic and hemi-cellulosic biomass. In this study, Oil Palm Trunk (OPT) sap was utilized to produce sugar and bioethanol using Saccharomyces cerevisiae (Yeast) as fermentation agent as well as Alanine amino acid (C 3 H 7 NO 2 ) and Epsom salt (MgSO 4 ) as nutritional supplements in anaerobic condition with 96 hours duration. The first objective of this study was to produce sugar and bioethanol from three different parts of OPT sap such as upper, middle and bottom part and identify the most-efficient part to optimize. Another objective was to demonstrate the effect of nutrients on fermentation process to determine highest yield. After experimenting fermentation process of 50 ml concentrated OPT sap with 30 ml warmed distilled water for 96 hours, obtained result indicated that upper part of OPT yielded the highest ethanol amount 58.34% (w/w) and sugar 21.14% (w/w) with nutrients.