Ethanol Production from Corn, Potato Peel Waste and its Process Development

Corn is one of the richest sources for the production of ethanol. This project was carried out to study the optimum conditions for the production of ethanol. The parameters like, pH, Substrate concentration and particle size were optimized using response surface method in the MINITAB 16 software. Both solid and submerged fermentation were studied. Submerged fermentation turned out to be favourable. Yeast fermentation was employed simultaneously with the saccharification process (SSF) for 72 hours. An attempt was made to produce ethanol from Potato peel waste, however it proved corn as an efficient substrate. There was a considerable yield of ethanol of 15.88g/l using pH 5.5, an intermediate particle size of 0.157mm and at a substrate concentration of 10% (W/V). A process development for the entire production was made involving the reactor design and the equipments to be used at an industrial scale.