Investigation of Various Local Fungi for Biomass Digestion

Consumption of ethanol produced from biomass carries wide opportunity to reduce the
use of gasoline and cut CO2 emissions. According to The National Development and
Reform Commission, the biomass availability in Malaysia and its potential energy
generated are 50,919 dry kton/year and 13,343 kton/year for 2011. Therefore, the
fermentation of waste banana branch cellulose with various local fungi include
Schizophyllum commune, Pycnoporus sanguineus, Micropus xanthopus, Perenial
Ganoderma lipsiense, Microporus affinis, Microporus xanthopus and Mycena sp has
been investigated for their ability to produce bioethanol. The production patterns of
fermentation were studied during the growth of the organisms for a period of interval of
two day until day 10. The cell wall breaking banana branch cellulose has been done using
the technique of ultrasound bath. The resulted bioethanol generation has been referred by
ethanol standard calibration of refractive index. Among seven types of the collected
fungi, fermentation yield resulted maximum 11% volume ethanol which represented by
Perenial Ganoderma lipsiense fungi at day 2. Very low levels of bioethanol production
were detected by the Microporus affinis fungi. The 11% yield percent of ethanol
produced by the experiment show the better ability of alternative fungi for bioethanol
industry compared to conventional fungi, yeast which also being included as a standard
of fungi fermentation.