Production of Bioethanol from Waste Newspaper

Paper, which is one of the largest constituent of Municipal solid waste, has become a severe problem for disposal in developed and developing countries due to the shrinking landfill capacity. It is very important and challenging task in managing the solid waste. Newspaper, which is a cellulosic feed stock, is emerging as an attractive option for the production of bio-ethanol because of lower feedstock costs, higher potential for fossil fuel displacement and also there will be reduction in greenhouse gas emission as compared to production of ethanol from corn. The main objective of the current project is to minimize the newspaper load on municipal solid waste by efficiently utilizing the waste newspaper in the production of bio-ethanol. Experimental studies have been carried out to optimize the pre-treatment process for increasing the efficiency of bacterial hydrolysis, the efficient conversion of cellulose to sugars from cellulose degrading microorganisms and to convert the sugars released to Ethanol by using Fermentation process. Pretreatment, hydrolysis and fermentation are the steps involved in the production of Bioethanol. In the pre-treatment process, the Lignin, Hemicellulose and Cellulose are separated to enhance the hydrolysis process. The optimized condition for the pre-treatment was found to be 1.5% concentration of H2SO4 at 121 °C and 45 minutes. The bacteria CytophagaHuchnosonni was used for hydrolysis process, which helped in converting the cellulose to sugars and was analysed using DinitroSalicilicacid. The reducing sugars were fermented to produce Bioethanol using the Yeast Saccharomyces Cerevisae and the yield was estimated using specific gravity method and also by using HPLC.