Evaluation of Efficiency of Pretreatment Methods on Corncob for Bioethanol Production

Abstract

The pre-treatment of feedstock is an integral step introduced for the degradation of the lignocelluloses components. However, pre-treatment methods can be used on various types of feedstock such as sucrose, starch, lignocelluloses and algal biomass through fermentation process by microorganisms. Compared to other types of microorganisms, yeasts especially Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Aspergillus niger are the common microbes employed in ethanol production due to its high ethanol productivity, high ethanol tolerance and ability of fermenting wide range of sugars to ethanol. This work was aim at comparing the efficiency of pretreatment methods in the production of bioethanol from corn cob. Corncob sample was grinded and exposed to steam explosion and dilute acid pretreatment, Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains were screened based on ethanol tolerances. Therefore, the bioethanol concentration was determined using specific gravity test. After analyzing the result statistically, the result obtained showed that dilute acid pretreatment is significantly different with p-value 0.02 (p<0.05). Among the pretreatment methods used dilute-acid pretreatment yielded the highest concentration of 25.03% (w/v), steam explosion 15.99% (w/v) and finally physical pretreatment with the least 5.99% (w/v).