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Conversion of apple pomace waste to ethanol at industrial relevant conditions

  • Bioenergy and biofuels
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Abstract

Apple pomace samples were evaluated for conversion to ethanol at industrial relevant conditions. Biomass degradation efficiency by commercial enzymes was evaluated at 20 % solid loading for dilute sulfuric acid, calcium oxide, and autoclave without any chemical (control) apple pomace samples. The control and calcium oxide-pretreated pomace provided similar sugar yields, while dilute sulfuric acid pretreatment resulted in reduced sugar yields. The control and calcium oxide-pretreated pomace hydrolysate were fermented to ethanol using a native Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast strain, producing 38.8 and 36.9 g/L of ethanol, respectively. When control apple pomace sample loading was increased from 20 to 30 %, 57.5 and 50.1 g/L of glucose and fructose was produced, respectively. Lastly, we found that unhydrolyzed solids (UHS) present during fermentation had little effect on ethanol yield, as 53.6 and 53.8 g/L of ethanol were produced with and without UHS, respectively. Overall, ethanol yields were 134 g per kg of dry apple pomace. A complete process mass balance for enzyme hydrolysis and ethanol fermentation is provided in this manuscript. These results show that apple pomace is an excellent feedstock for producing ethanol that could be either used as biofuel or as beverage.

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Acknowledgments

We thank William Koucky (Northwestern Biodiesel, Traverse City, MI) for providing apple pomace samples for this project. We thank funding from the state of Michigan through the Small Company Innovation Program (SCIP). This is a program of the Michigan Corporate Relations Network (MCRN). We thank Novozymes for supplying the commercial enzymes used in this project and Lee Alexander and Christa Gunawan for analyzing HPLC samples.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Biomass Conversion Research Laboratory (BCRL), Department of Chemical Engineering and Material Science, Michigan State University (MSU), MBI Building, 3900 Collins Road, Lansing, MI, 48910, USA

    Margaret Magyar, Leonardo da Costa Sousa, Mingjie **, Cory Sarks & Venkatesh Balan

  2. School of Environmental and Biological Engineering, Nan**g University of Science and Technology, Nan**g, 210094, China

    Mingjie **

Authors
  1. Margaret Magyar
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  2. Leonardo da Costa Sousa
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  3. Mingjie **
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  4. Cory Sarks
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  5. Venkatesh Balan
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Correspondence to Venkatesh Balan.

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The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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No animal or humans were involved in this study.

Funding source

This project was partially funded by William Koucky (NorthWestern Biodiesel, Traverse City, MI) and the state of Michigan through Small Company Innovation Program (SCIP).

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Magyar, M., da Costa Sousa, L., **, M. et al. Conversion of apple pomace waste to ethanol at industrial relevant conditions. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 100, 7349–7358 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-016-7665-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-016-7665-7

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