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💯√ What is Ethanol Fermentation Process?

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Purification of Ethanol Products
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Introduction
In this section, I'll be discussing fermentation, which is a natural process by which we
can make ethanol from readily viable things such as fruits and vegetables.

Carbohydrates
The starting raw material for making ethanol is carbohydrates, like glucose, sucrose,
or starch.

Wine
Wine is made from grape juice, and microorganisms called yeasts convert the
sugars to ethanol and carbon dioxide as a by-product. In Australia, we grow a lot of
sugarcane, which is used to make wine.

Raw Material
Australia has great conditions for sugar cane, and we get a lot of sugar from it. We
also get molasses, which is a sugary brown syrup, which can be used to make
ethanol and alcoholic beverages.
Sucrose is a simple sugar that is a combination of two different sugars stuck
together. Because it is a ring structure, we can ferment it into ethanol, and that's an
economically viable way to make ethanol.
Glucose is converted to ethanol and carbon dioxide by a yeast enzyme. You need
yeast for this reaction to go forward.
A fermentation takes place in anaerobic conditions, and we exclude oxygen from the
reaction system to avoid aerobic respiration and unwanted reactions. The enzymes
that yeast produce break down the sugars, and this is how we get ethanol.

Enzymes
Enzymes are protein molecules that act as biological catalysts in reactions.

Conditions for Fermentation


There are a few conditions that we need for fermentation, including the presence of
yeast and a specific reaction temperature of 37 degrees Celsius.
To increase the surface area for fermentation, the solid raw materials have to be
chopped up and minced up. You also need the absence of air.

Fermentation Diagram
Fermentation is an exothermic reaction, which means that heat energy is released.
You have to be careful not to let the heat build up and increase above 37 degrees, or
the yeast will die and the reaction will stop.
In fermentation reactions, alcohol tolerant yeast is used because if the yeast is not
tolerant to alcohol, it will die and the reaction will stop. So in beer, the ethanol
content is about 5% with less in light beers.

Spirits
Fortified wines like port and sherry have a higher ethanol concentration, and they get
this higher concentration by adding extra ethanol. Spirits, on the other hand, get their
higher concentrations of ethanol from distillation.

Water Separation
By removing the water, you can get a higher concentration of ethanol as you keep
removing that water, but it's difficult to produce a higher purity because of the strong
hydrogen bonding between the water and the ethanol molecules.

Purification
There are seven steps to making sugar from organic biomass, which include
crushing and grinding the biomass, adding dilute acid, hydrolyzing the biomass,
filtering the sugary solution, and treating it with calcium hydroxide to neutralize the
acid.

Importance of Fermentation
Ethanol produced from fermentation is used in all alcoholic beverages and also in
industrial alcohol applications.
A reaction can be performed to convert ethanol to ethylene, which is an important
raw material for the petrochemical industry. Fermentation is a potential alternative
source for ethylene and also for fuel for transport.

Conclusion
If you take a sugar and react it with yeast, you'll get ethanol and carbon dioxide gas,
and also heat.

Q1 Ethanol Production
If we take Ethan and add water, double bonds will break and we will get ethanol.

Q3 Fermentation Process
Question 3: Write an equation to represent the fermentation process. You need to
remember that we're going from glucose to ethanol and carbon dioxide.
To promote fermentation of glucose, we need an enzyme, a temperature of 37
degrees, raw plant materials chopped up and mashed up, and oxygen excluded from
the process.
Fermentation is an exothermic reaction, so we have to ensure that the temperature
does not increase too much, that the ethanol concentration does not reach 15%, that
the oxygen is excluded from the fermentation vessels, and that the solution is boiled
before the addition of the enzyme or yeast.

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