Bioethanol production from dilute fruit wastes using sorghum as additional fermentable sugar

Abstract

The global reliance on expensive fossil fuels for energy including transportation is causing environmental issues like global warming and air pollution, necessitating the search for eco-friendly and economically viable alternatives. The study investigated bioethanol production from pineapple, mango, pawpaw, and watermelon fruit wastes using sorghum as additional fermentable sugar through fermentation and distillation. After the juice extraction and dilution using clean tap water at a ratio of 1:1, each fruit’s juice with sorghum flour were fermented for 11 days followed by distillation to produce bioethanol. Results show that a mixture of pineapple fruit waste’s juice and sorghum produced the highest bioethanol of alcohol content of 25% while mango fruit waste’s juice gave 15% with pawpaw giving 10%, and watermelon the last with 4% for the first aliquot of 100 mL. Fruit waste’s juice mixture with sorghum produced the highest alcohol content of 11%, while a mixture of fruit wastes juice without sorghum gave 10% for the first aliquot of 100 mL. Results indicate further that re-distillation improved the quality of bioethanol from the alcohol content between 5-8% to 72%. The study of bioethanol production from unexplored fruit wastes utilizing technologies like fermentation and distillation provides a promising avenue for research.

Keywords:

• Fermentation
• distillation
• biofuel
• alternative energy source and brix

Acknowledgement

Authors are grateful to Mkwawa University College of Education for material support.

Author contributions

Authors listed significantly participated to the writing of this paper.

Data availability statement

No data was used for the research described in the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

No additional information is available for this article.