ABSTRACT

The yield of bioethanol from banana peels hydrolysed with Sacchromyces cerevisiae. Banana peels were sun dried and pretreated. After hydrolysis, Saccharomyces cerevisiae were used to ferment the hydrolysates separately at room temperature. From the result, there are several fermentation properties such as pH, Specific gravity, Titratable acid, Biomass, alcohol, Temperature and sugar content. Some of the properties increase with fermentation time while some reduce. The sugar content, pH, total solid and specific gravity reduced with fermentation time while the titratable acid, alcohol content and Biomass increased with fermentation time. The pH reduced from the initial value of 6.6 to 2.61 at the end of the fermentation. There was also a decrease in the specific gravity from 1.22 to 0.91 during the period of fermentation. Similarly, the total solid decreased from 15.57% to 7.18%. Sugar content decreased from 20.72% to 2.25% in the fermenting alcohol. There was a significant variation in the titratable acid which was increased from 0.13 to 1.44. The alcohol also increased with increasing biomass. The work reveals that banana peels is a suitable agricultural waste for bioethanol production and fermentation with Saccharomyces cerevisiae yielded high ethanol. Palm wine yeast is useful for the production of alcohols. There is need for optimization of banana peel hydrolysate to beef up the Brix (sugar contents) for effective use in ethanol production.