Produção de etanol a partir do resíduo da batata proveniente da indústria alimentícia

Abstract

Ethyl alcohol is a source of clean and renewable energy of great importance for the Brazilian economy, its use comes from the 1970s due to the sugarcane expansion. Due to growing environmental concern and reduction of food waste, ethanol produced in Brazil was no longer exclusively produced from sugarcane and there was a need to seek other means for its production, such as food waste, including potatoes. In this work, the production of alcohol through the hydrolysis with α-amylase, and consequent fermentation of the potato residue from the food industry, was proposed. For the hydrolysis, experiments were carried out by varying the time, temperature, residue / water ratio and the enzyme, obtaining the conversion of part of the starch present in the residue into fermentable sugars. Later, the fermentation of the wort was carried out through the Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast, where part of the sugars were converted to alcohol, having as variables the time and the temperature. The final product presented 4.20 ºGL of alcohol, lower alcohol content than that found in the literature. It is suggested that other yeast strains should be used to increase the amount of fermentable sugars and techniques to better quantify the ethanol in the process.