B.Bharathiraja, R.Praveen Kumar, M.Prukinthraj,S.Palani,
Department of biotechnology, Arunai Engineering
College, Tiruvannamalai, TamilNadu, India-606603.
btrbio@gmail.com, PH: +91 9843557513.
Ethanol is gaining momentum as a viable fuel source due to recent fluctuations in the market of conventional fossil fuels. In addition to its common pharmaceutical and beverage uses, ethanol has been used as a fuel additive, gasoline enhancer and even as an alternative fuel source. Five different mutant strains were developed from the wild strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae using UV irradiation technique by varying the exposure timings. All the mutant cultures were used for ethanol production using sawdust hydrolysate as a substrate in a batch fermenter. The effect of temperature and pH on ethanol production were studied and optimized. The mutant strain 4 gave a maximum ethanol production of 7.5 g/l under identical conditions. The conditions were optimized for mutant strain 4 and a temperature of 330C and pH 4.5 were found to be optimum. The kinetics of ethanol production using mutant strain 4 under optimum conditions was studied. Monod model for growth kinetics and Michaelis Menton kinetics for product formation were found to represent the experimental data.
Keywords: Sawdust hydrolysate, ethanol, mutant, fermentation, Saccharomyces cerevisiae.