The 13th Asia Pacific Confederation of APCChE 2010

Chemical Engineering Congress October 5-8, 2010, Taipei

Bioethanol Production from Sweet Sorghum Bagasse

Amir Goshadroua* and Keikhosro Karimia,b

a
Department of Chemical Engineering
Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, 84156-83111, Iran.
b
School of Engineering
University of Borås, Borås, Sweden.
*
Corresponding Author’s E-mail: goshadrou@ce.iut.ac.ir

Keywords: Sweet sorghum; Bagasse; Bioconversion; Pretreatment; Enzymatic hydrolysis.

Abstract
Bioethanol is the most important liquid biofuel which can be produced from different raw
materials such as sugar substances, starchy materials, and lignocellulosic biomass.  Using
lignocellulosic biomass as a promising feedstock is unavoidable for bioethanol production for the
future.
Sweet sorghum is a tall grass that can be readily cultivated into larger regions than other warm-
cereal grains with low requirement to fertilizer and water per dry ton of crop, beside a high yield of
sugar per hectare than other sugars. The short harvesting period, in the range of 90-120 days, and
adaptation to sub-humid and semiarid climates, makes the sweet sorghum an attractive alternative
feedstock for ethanol production. Different parts of sweet sorghum including sugar, seeds, and
bagasse can be converted to bioethanol. However, the current work deals with ethanol production
from the bagasse, since the other parts can be used as human and animal feed.
Cellulose, the prevailing component of the bagasse, should be hydrolyzed to its glucose monomer
units before fermentation. However, the cellulose is chemically stable, high crystalline, and well
protected in the natural lignocellulosic structure by lignin and hemicellulose. Thus, similar to other
lignocellulosic materials, the native bagasse needs a pretreatment for efficient conversion to
fermentable sugars. Up to now, several methods for pretreatments of lignocellulosic materials have
been investigated. Concentrated phosphoric acid is among the promising method for pretreatment of
lignocelluloses. The process can dissolve cellulose at moderate temperature in the presence of water.
The main objective of this research was to develop a method for pretreatment of sweet sorghum
bagasse in order to enhance the ethanol production yield using ultrasound irradiation. The effect of
ultrasound assisted phosphoric acid pretreatment on ethanol production yield with Saccharomyces
cerevisiae was investigated.
Sweet sorghum bagasse (kindly provided by Dr. Abbas Almodares, Department of biological
science, University of Isfahan) was milled and screened, and used in all experiments. Enzymatic
hydrolysis of untreated and pretreated bagasse were performed at 45°C and 120 rpm for 72 h in
sodium citrate buffer (0.05 M and pH=4.8). The enzymes loading for hydrolyses were 20 FPU
cellulase and 50 IU β-glucosidase per gram of the dry substrates. A flocculent strain of S. cerevisiae
53310 CCUG (Culture Collection University of Gothenburg, Sweden) was used for bioconversion of
the hydrolyzates to ethanol. The hydrolyzates were aseptically inoculated with 5 g/L S. cerevisiae, and
incubated anaerobically at 32°C for 60 h. All liquid samples from hydrolysis and fermentation stages
were analyzed by HPLC.
The results show that the bagasse from sweet sorghum can be efficiently converted to fermentable
sugars. Although the yields of native bagasse are relatively low, the pretreatment can significantly
improve the enzymatic hydrolysis. The hydrolyzate can be converted to bioethanol by a high yield
using S. cerevisiae.