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Production of Biofuel From Fruits and Vegetable Wastes
Production of Biofuel From Fruits and Vegetable Wastes
Abstract
Production of biofuel from fruits and vegetable waste has been carried out with the singular aim of converting the waste to useful
material. The Bioethanol was produced by using fruit waste like Indian water chestnut, sweet potato, jackfruit and pineapple. To
achieve this, the conversion of fruits and vegetable wastes were respectively carried out via acid hydrolysis, which yielded
fermentable sugar. A pure culture of Saccharomyces cerevisiae was used to carry out the fermentation process. It was seen that
after fermentation, pineapple waste produced 0.090% (0.90 mg/ml) ethanol, sweet potato waste produced 0.079% (0.79 mg/ml)
ethanol, Indian water chestnut waste produced 0.045% (0.45ml/ml) ethanol whereas jackfruit waste produced 0.045% (0.45
mg/ml) ethanol. The study considered the enormous amount of fruits and vegetable wastes thrown away daily in every household,
and therefore embarked upon the conversion of these wastes into a useful product, ethanol.
Key words: fruits and vegetable wastes, biofuel, fermentation, conversion, distillation
Organisms used and kept at both static and shaker conditions. The cell density
Saccharomyces cerevisiae (Baker’s yeast) was used for of the S. cerevisiae suspension was checked using
fermentation. Selection of given yeast was done due to their Haemocytometer count. 2ml of culture (0.529 x 106cells/mm3)
ability to produce high yield of alcohol by fermenting sugars. was then added to the fermentation medium and allowed to
The yeast granules were grown for 24-48 hrs at room ferment. Aliquots were removed at different time intervals and
temperature in Sabouraud’s broth. The broth was streaked on subjected to distillation. Distilled samples were subjected to
sterile Sabouraud’s agar plates. Pure cultures of ethanol estimation by Dichromate method (Zimmermann,
Saccharomyces cerevisiae were maintained on Sabouraud’s 1963). A standard set of tubes containing 0.2 – 1.0 mg/ml
agar slants. Regular subculturing was carried out in 1- 2 alcohol was run and from the standard graph, the total alcohol
weeks. 24- 48 hr grown cultures were used for the study. content in distillate was estimated.
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European Journal of Biotechnology and Bioscience
impedes the growth of yeast and will thereby also affect the decrease in the alcohol production as the days proceded
ability of the yeast to ferment the sugars to alcohol. indicating the glucose level decreasing (Figure 6).
It is also seen that furfural, a by-product of xylose
degradation, was also generated as a consequence of acid
hydrolysis (Ackerson et al., 1981) [1]. The rate of degradation
depends on temperature and concentration of Sulfuric acid
(Gonzales et al., 1986) [6]. Therefore, over liming with
Ca(OH)2 and heating at high temperature are required for
removal or reduction of volatile compounds ( e.g. Furfural and
phenol), acetic acid and tannic acid, which is generally
resulting in better fermentability of the hydrolysate ( Martinez
et al., 2000) [12].
4. Conclusion
India is amongst top five bioethanol producing countries
(Demirbas, 2009). Currently bioethanol is produced from
alcoholic fermentation of molasses or simple sugars, which are
produced from crops generating starch or sugar.The
Fig 5: Maximum ethanol produced from the given fruits waste
bioethanol was produced by using fruit waste like Indian water
chestnut, sweet potato, jackfruit and pineapple with the help of
It was seen that after fermentation using Saccharomyces Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Maximum amount of bioethanol
cerevisiae, pineapple waste produced 0.090% (0.90 mg/ml) was obtained from the pineapple waste and then sweet potato
ethanol, sweet potato waste produced 0.079% (0.79 mg/ml) waste i.e. 0.090% and 0.079% respectively whereas bioethanol
ethanol, Indian water chestnut waste produced 0.045% (0.45 obtained from the Indian water chestnut waste and the
mg/ml) ethanol whereas jackfruit waste produced 0.045% jackfruit waste was 0.045%. The method used is a simple,
(0.45 mg/ml) ethanol (Figure 5). The amount of ethanol reliable process for economical bioconversion of given fruit
produced was comparatively less in comparison to the work waste to alcohol. The waste part of fruit is easily available at
carried out by Hossain et al. (2008), Kumar et al. (2015) [10] large amount and they obtained at free of cost compare to the
and Kumoro et al. (2012) [11]. whole fruit which help to reduce the cost of biofuel. Further
The fermentation process was carried out for 11 days. It was standardization of the process needs to be carried out for
observed that the alcohol production was highest on day 3 for optimum bioethanol production.
Indian water chestnut waste (0.45 mg/ml) and Jackfruit waste
(0.45 mg/ml) resp. whereas maximum alcohol production was 5. Acknowledgment
seen on day 5 when sweet potato waste (0.78 mg/ml) and The authors would like to thank the teaching and nonteaching
pineapple waste (0.9 mg/ml) was used. There was steady staff of the College for their support in this work.
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