Development of optimal strategy for the production of bioethanol from prosopis juliflora

Abstract

Bioethanol from lignocellulosic biomass is a major alternative to existing fossil fuels. They play a significant role in reduction of Greenhouse gas emission and thus facilitate in maintaining the atmosphere. Furthermore the utilization of Prosopis juliflora, (weed plant source) holds an additional advantage of its effective utilization and long term availability of biomass for the production of biofuel. Production of bioethanol from lignocellulosic biomass consist of several steps such as pretreatment, hydrolysis and fermentation. Pretreatment of biomass helps in fractionation of the recalcitrant lignocellulose biomass and alteration of the chemical composition to aid in hydrolysis of cellulose moieties to fermentable sugars. Hydrolysis using enzymes help in effective conversion of polysaccharides in to simple monosugars, which could be then fermented into bioethanol using microorganism. The present study aims at development of suitable pretreatment strategy for the delignification of biomass and subsequent hydrolysis and fermentation of pretreated biomass into ethanol. The efficiency of physiochemical methods such as microwave assisted acid/alkali pretreatment, ultrasound assisted acid/alkali pretreatment and Biological method using fungus on delignification of biomass was evaluated. Physiochemical pretreatment strategies such as microwave assisted acid/alkali method, ultrasound assisted acid/alkali method and biological pretreatment using fungus were studied exhaustively. In microwave assisted acid/alkali pretreatment, the effect of different process parameters such as microwave power, alkali/acid concentration, solid liquid ratio and pretreatment time were studied in detail. newline