EFFECT OF BASIC PRETREATMENT ON SACCHARIFICATION OF WATER HYACINTH

Hari Narayanan T R, Sathvik Varma V, Jagadish H Patil

Abstract: The world has seen a vast expansion in industrialization and this has in turn seen an increase in demand for fossil fuels. To sustain such a pace of development, these fuels are being consumed at a rapid rate. This dependence on the fuels coupled with their rapid rate of depletion has called for research to look for alternative fuels. Biofuels like bio-ethanol and bio-diesel are being considered as replacements. Bio-ethanol is being given special consideration, as it can be used as a substitute to, or as a blend with petrol in existing gasoline engines, without much modifications being made to these engines. The substrates under consideration are that of the biomass genre, and Water Hyacinth being of special importance.. Water Hyacinth is an aquatic weed which grows in most tropical parts of the world. It has considerably lower lignin and higher cellulosic content, which makes it a suitable substrate for bio-ethanol production. The three main steps for bio-ethanol production are pretreatment, which makes the biomass amenable to further treatment, Saccharification, the process by which complex sugars are broken down to simple reducing sugars and fermentation, where the sugars are fermented by the action of relevant fungi. This study focusses on the Saccharification step of the process, specifically focusing on the effect of pretreatment on the Saccharification of Water Hyacinth. Three samples of powdered Water Hyacinth, along with 3 samples of Base pretreated Water Hyacinth powder were subjected to the Saccharification process using TrichodermaViride. It was observed that the Saccharification yields for the pretreated samples were in excess of 200% greater than that of the Saccharification yields of the powdered Water Hyacinth samples without pretreatment. These results were observed on the day 2 of the process. The results of this study will be taken into consideration for the fermentation step of the process.

Keywords: Water Hyacinth, Pretreatment, Saccharification, Reducing sugar yield, High yields

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15623/ijret.2013.0211012