Aloisio L., De Santis A., Spera D., Pignatelli V., Albergo R., 2014, Innovative of Second Generation Ethanol Production from Biomass Crops by Pichia Stipitis, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 38, 115-120.
The production of ethanol from lignocellulosic material, as reported by Kumar (2009), consists of mainly five different steps, namely pretreatment, (enzymatic) hydrolysis, fermentation, product separation and post-treatment of the liquid fraction. The pretreatment is necessary to improve the rate of production and the total yield of monomeric sugars in the hydrolysis step. The produced monomeric hexoses (six carbon sugars) can be fermented to ethanol quite easily, while the fermentation of pentoses (five carbon sugars) is only made by a few strains. It’s been choosen a strain of Pichia stipitis wich is able to convert hexoses and pentoses to ethanol. Preliminary tests with P. stipitis and synthetic broth containing glucose and xylose confirmed the utility ofstipitis to produce ethanol by hexoses and pentoses.. Pretreatment (acid and alkali), hydrolysis with enzymes and fermentation with P. stipitis allowed to produce ethanol by using mulberry as biomass.
