Bioethanol Production from Saccharified Sweet Potato (Ipomoea batatas L.) Root Flour using Immobilized Cells of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Zymomonas mobilis by RSM Method

With the increase in price of fossil fuels, the demand of bioethanol production from agricultural crops has become very crucial to meet the energy crisis in both developing and developed countries in future. Sweet potato is considered as an important agricultural crop due to its abundance and high amount of starch content. The present study focuses on bioethanol production from saccharified sweet potato root flour (SPRF) using co-immobilized cells of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Zymomonas mobilis for bioethanol production by RSM method. The process parameters such as temperature, pH and incubation time were found to be the most favorable variables for the maximum ethanol production with box-behnken design of response surface methodology (RSM). Maximum ethanol of 90.6 g/kg of SPRF was obtained at pH 4.5 with an incubation period of 72 h at 32.5 C by response surface methodology.