ETHANOL PREPARATION FROM SUGARCANE BAGASSE

Abstract

Development of liquid biofuels has entered a new phase of large scale pilot demonstrations. A number of plants in operation or under construction face the engineering challenges of creating a viable plant design, scaling up, and optimizing various unit operations. Energy has become one of the major concerns for our world, the world intention in replacing the non-renewable energy by renewable has become very crucial in terms of reducing negative environmental impact. Bagasse is a by-product disposed from sugar factory in massive quantity, the dried bagasse has a content of cellulose and hemicellulose, which is a high potential in production of fuel ethanol by fermenting the hydrolysed substrate. This thesis aims at utilizing sugarcane bagasse for the production of ethanol by using the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, thus, producing a valuable product from bagasse. Three laboratory experiment was conducted with three difference concentration of acid hydrolysis.94.6g of bagasse is take as sample, mixed with hot water for mixing, and hydrolyzed to break down the cellulose into simple sugar, the PH adjusted to make fever able condition for yeast, yeast media preparation was done for fermentation then mixing the resulting substrate, the media was kept for 24hr under anaerobic condition for alcoholic fermentation, following fermentation the cell mass was separated by filtration, finally the fermented result was distilled to concentrate the ethanol produced, therefore the experiment shows from 94.6g of dried bagasse there obtain 12 ml of hydrous ethanol. During experiment, moisture content and sieve analysis was conducted for the raw material and different analytical and measured data was analyzed like, PH, density and odors were studied. Material balance, energy balance and sizing were conducted in industrial based from annual production rate of 2.74*106L per year. The economic analysis was evaluated that shows with total capital investment of $2,255,154.4, the payback period is 3 years, rate on return on investment is 18% and net present worth is $291,586.3(the value is positive). Therefore, according to the profitability indicator test the project is acceptable and feasible.