Hydrolysis of Aguapé (water hyacinth) aiming the ethanol production

Abstract

Biomass, defined as all organic material of animal or vegetable origin, can be used as energy source. One important form of renewable energy is the biofuels, mainly the ethanol. For ethanol production some kind of carbohydrate has to be used as a raw material. Second generation ethanol production specifically has been intensively studied using sugar cane bagasse, corn stalk and sweet sorghum bagasse as sources of lignocellulosic biomass. Water hyacinth, Eichhornia crassipes, possessing characteristic of phyto purification, is considered a pest because of their uncontrolled proliferation combined with reduced oxigenative capacity of water bodies and easy adaptation to medium and high vegetative growth. Although it has a small dry weight percentage, it's an important alternative in the energy sector, where these same characteristics become advantages. This biomass can be used as raw material for second generation ethanol production and with low cost for cultivation. During the realization of this project the plants of Eichhnornia crassipes, Water Hyacinth, will be removed from the water bodies manually. To increase the surface area this biomass will be crushed, and subsequently hydrolyzed either using acid or enzymes. After hydrolysis the material will be converted to glucose which will then enter fermentation process utilizing commercial yeast for alcohol production. The process last step will be distillation by fermented mash. Before, during and after biofermentation chemical and biochemical analyses will be carried out to determine efficiency, fermentation speed, heavy metal and alcohol content as well as characterization of raw material and the end product employing analytical techniques such as X-ray, SEM and TEM among others. (AU)