OPTIMIZATION OF ACID HYDROLYSIS IN ETHANOL PRODUCTION FROM PROSOPIS JULIFLORA

Abstract

This thesis employs optimization of acid hydrolysis to produce ethanol from prosopis juliflora. It was used dilute acid pretreatment, dilute acid hydrolysis, fermentation and distillation processes. The experiment has three factors (temperature, time and acid concentration) which have two level and a replicas (2^3*1=8 experimental runs) was run to optimize acid hydrolysis. Temperature varied from 100 0 c to 1150 c, time varied from 5 to 15 min and acid concentration varied from 0.3 to 3%.The screening of significant acid hydrolysis factors were done by using the two-level full factorial design using design expert® 7 software. The statistical analysis showed that the ethanol yield of (40.91% (g/g)) was obtained at optimised acid hydrolysis variables of 0.3%v/v acid concentration, 100.01°C temperature, and 5.00 minutes hydrolysis time.