Kinetics studies on ethanol production from banana peel waste using mutant strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Five different mutant strains were developed from the wild strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae (MTCC No.287) using UV irradiation technique by varying the exposure timings. All the mutant cultures were used for ethanol production using banana peel as a substrate in a batch fermenter. The effect of temperature, pH and initial substrate concentration on ethanol production were studied and optimized. The mutant strain 4 gave a maximum ethanol production of 9 g/L under identical conditions. The conditions were optimized for mutant strain 4 and a temperature of 33°C, pH 4.5 and initial substrate concentration 10%(w/v) were found to be optimum. The kinetics of ethanol production using mutant strain 4 under optimum conditions was studied and modeling was attempted using different models. Monod model for growth kinetics and Leudeking-Piret model for product formation kinetics were found to represent the experimental data very well.