Pre-Treatment of Sugarcane Bagasse for Production of Ethanol

The use of ethanol is increasing throughout the world for number of reasons. It is mainly used as potential alternative for fuel to fulfilthe need of country for economic development. The production of ethanol in our country does not satisfy the need from industrial sector. So large amount of ethanol we have to import from foreign country. Hence to avoid this dependency we have to increase the production of ethanol in our country. Ethanol is mainly produce from sugarcane molasses and grains. As sugarcane is water intensive crop. Its production is depending upon whether conditions. As a weather condition fluctuates it affects the production and cost. And we cannot increase the production of sugarcane beyond certain limit. At the same time these raw materials were mainly used as food resources. Hence unintentionally. It creates the diversion of food resources. Price increases which results to food v/s fuel crisis. Hence to overcome the situation this is the today’s need to develop the bio ethanol from such materials. Which does not used resources. Lignocellulosic material is found s feasible raw material for the development of bio ethanol. But its commercialization is highly limited of bio ethanol from lignocellulosic raw material being challenge in the future. Lignocellulosic biomass is made up of cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin. The desired cellulose content is generally bounded by hemicelluloses and then lignin. The lignin is necessary to separate to increase the accessibility of cellulose by carrying out the pre-treatment. The number of pre-treatment method available but not the single method is resulted as best option because as the raw material gets change the effective pre-treatment process also change. These processes are still under research to increase the economy and efficiency. The document presents why sugarcane bagasse as raw material, general procedure to carry out the pre-treatment, DNSA method to find the content of reducing sugar,acid-based hydrolysis processes at optimised conditions. The final optimized conditions are - Optimized concentration: 4% H2SO4 - Optimized temperature: 120 degC - Optimized time: 30 min.