Studies on efficient utilization of fruit peel waste for Bio-Ethanol production

Abstract

The current work is a basic study on utilization of fruit peels of banana, muskmelon, pineapple and water melonas lignocellulosic sources for the production of bioethanol. Fruit peels contain good amounts of cellulose and hemicellulose which can be pretreated to release fermentable sugars. Efforts were directed towards understanding critical factors influencing substrate loading, acid hydrolysis and fermentation parameters. Various concentrations of substrate (10, 15 and 25%), acid treatment (0.5 and 1%) and Incubation time(60-180 min) were the factors considered for pretreatment optimization. It was observed that the reducing sugar content was highest in the peels treated with 0.5% acid with an incubation period of 1 hour at 60 0 C.The highest yields of ethanol were observed in samples at 10% substrate concentration after about 7days.