ABSTRACT

Ethanol and biomass production from riped banana peels were undertaken using palm wine yeasts and Aspergillus niger. Riped banana peels were processed and its sugar content was determined to be below 8% before it was optimized to about 21%, it was separately inoculated with Aspergillus niger and palm wine yeasts and allowed to ferment for eleven days during which the quality characteristics, ethanol and biomass production were monitored on 48 hourly basis. Obtain results show variations between the fermentation dynamics of the two organisms in the both cases, temperature fermented between 300c and 320c while pH produced from 6.2 to 2.1 with variations only in the first 5 days. The acidity increased from 0.16% to 2.18% in Aspergillus niger fermented liquor. While, the specific gravity also reduced from 1.18 to 0.46 in both cases while total solid reduced from 16.80% to 1.66% in Aspergillus niger fermented liquor and 16.90% to 1.73% in palm wine yeasts fermented liquor. Sugar concentration was about the same used in both where reduction in sugar content ranged from 21.20% to 2.69% and 21.30% to 2.78% in the liquors. Biomass production was slightly higher in Aspergillus niger fermented liquor 1.19% to 0.70 than in the palm wine yeasts fermented liquor 1.16 to 0.69 as recorded on the 9th day but both reduced slightly at the end having 1.20% and 1.16% respectively. The quality of ethanol produced was 9.74% and 10.74% with Aspergillus niger fermented liquor and palm wine fermented liquor. It was observed that the palm wine yeasts fermented banana peels had slightly higher ethanol yield than the Aspergillus niger fermented one while the later had slightly higher biomass yield in all, the use of banana peels for bioethanol and biomass production was successful. And can help in converting waste (banana peels) to useful products (alcohol and singe cell proteins Biomass) while what happened in that of palm wine yeast is lower than that of Aspergillus niger