ABSTRACT
The ever increasing dependence on fossil fuels, its environmental impacts and ecological degradations have led to relentless, nonstop, and intense search for renewable alternative energy sources, primarily aimed at controlling and eliminating the adverse environmental costs of energy generation from conventional fuels. Fossil fuels according to well sourced and collated statistical reports, contribute the largest quota to global energy generation due to abundant reserves across the globe. When energy is generated from fossil fuels, certain environmental pollutants chiefly gaseous are released into the environment. These gaseous substances constitute an effect known as greenhouse effects and thus are termed Green House Gases (GHG). A major breakthrough in the search for renewable alternative energy sources is the development of biofuels; which are simply conversion of liquid fuels directly from plant and animal materials. As an addition to the already existing body of knowledge, the scope of this study covers producing bioethanol from sugarcane bagasse, variation of certain process conditions and analysis of the potency of selected operational methods. The sugarcane bagasse which is a fibrous biomass residue of the sugarcane used for the analysis was preferred to other biomasses because of its non-competitiveness with food supply and / or availability. The bagasse was physically pretreated by drying and milling, hydrolyzed by acid and microbial methods (Aspergillus Niger).Fermentation was carried out at temperatures of 4 °C, 28 °C, and 37 °C for five days. The results of the experiment shows that microbial hydrolysate on fermentation, yielded a higher volume of ethanol, 0.003979 mL at 28 °C than the acid hydrolysis counterpart, 0.003454mL at 37 °C. Characterization of the produced ethanol conforms to the properties expressed in previous literatures. Observed slight variations were due to the quantity of bagasse used, sugarcane sources and experimental procedures. It was also observed that fermentation was possible at certain extreme process conditions.
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