Isolation and characterization of Saccharomyces species for bioethanol production from sugarcane molasses: Studies of scale up in bioreactor

María Laura Muruaga, Kátia G. Carvalho, José Manuel Domínguez, Ricardo Pinheiro de Souza Oliveira and Nora Perotti

Renewable Energy, 2016, vol. 85, issue C, 649-656

Abstract: Decreases in oil reserves and gas fields around all over the world justify the deepening of studies to render viable the larger-scale use of new energy sources. Therefore, the use of microorganisms to convert sugars into ethanol is a feasible process to be performed in a short period of time and at low costs. In this context, this study aimed to select ethanol-producing yeasts, after isolating samples in molasses obtained from companies in the Province of Tucumán (Argentina) and grapes obtained from farms located in Cafayate (Salta, Argentina). Among the twenty-nine samples studied A2, A10 and A11 isolates showed higher ethanol productions of 12.87; 13.64 and 13.46% respectively. A2 showed a homogeneous growth meanwhile the growth of strains A10 and A11 was flocculent. Molecular taxonomic characterization of these isolates showed a percentage of similarity of 100% with the strain Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The behavior of the non-flocculent A2 strain at laboratory scale was faster using a sugarcane molasses based medium, reaching 11.36% ethanol without adding nutrients and other growth factors, probably because its disperse form facilitates the transfer of nutrients and products. These values were improved to 12.02% when the process was scaled up to a 10L bioreactor. All these studies allowed concluding that S. cerevisiae A2 strain is a promising microorganism for the production of bioethanol with potential environmental, energy and economic benefits to be projected into industrial scale.

Keywords: Sugarcane molasses; Bioethanol; Saccharomyces cerevisiae; Bioreator (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148115301051
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:85:y:2016:i:c:p:649-656

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2015.07.008

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

More articles in Renewable Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().