A Saccharification Study on Various Non-Food Biomasses for Fermentation to Ethanol

Nowadays, biomass is an increasingly popular source for alternative energy. Ethanol is one of the alternative renewable fuels made from various plant materials. It can be made out of feedstock through a chemical process known as fermentation which is either from starch-based crop or cellulosic materials. This study is conducted to ferment cellulosic material which is quite challenging in term of structural wall compared to starch-based material. Glutinous rice is starch-based material while thatch, palm oil frond, and banana branch are used as cellulosic materials. The cell structure of starch-based and cellulosic materials are different which cellulosic material composed of molecule called lignocelluloses (cellulose, hemicelluloses and lignin). Due to this structure, several pre-treatment processes are investigated to break down lignocellulose into glucose chains. The processes used are thermal composition, microwave, and ultrasound. Refractometer is used to test the concentration of ethanol from the fermentation process. The sample of fermentation contains ethanol when its refractive index is in range of 1.3357 to 1.3642. Glutinous rice undergoes rapid fermentation day by day and produces 57.6% and 82.0% ethanol by using thermal and ultrasound, respectively. It shows that banana branch and palm oil frond have potential beside glutinous rice because it gives out 18.9% ethanol by thermal composition and 20.7% by ultrasound technique, respectively. Furthermore, ultrasound technique should be further studied as it shows good performance of fermentation compares to other techniques.