Wheat as a Promising Substitute of Corn for Bioethanol Production

Abstract

Excessive consumption of fossil fuels, particularly in large urban areas, has resulted in generation of high levels of pollution during the last few decades. All petroleum-based fuels can be replaced by renewable biomass fuels such as bioethanol, bio-diesel, bio-hydrogen, etc. Bioethanol is an attractive alternative fuel because it is a renewable bio-based resource and it is oxygenated thereby provides the potential to reduce particulate emissions in compression ignition engines .It has a higher octane number, and lower cetane number, broader flammability limits, higher flame speeds and higher heats of vaporization than gasoline. The bioethanol can be produced from lignocellulosic biomass, starchy materials such as corn, wheat, cereals etc and sucrose containing feedstocks. Major portion of the production methods uses corn for the same, but since India being the second largest producer of wheat and there is availability of different varieties of wheat, we have selected wheat as a feedstock. After thorough review of extensive literature we finalized two enz ymes viz; glucoamylase and -amylase followed by fermentation process using bake yeast Saccharomyces Cerivisiae. Experiments were carried out to see the day wise decrease in concentration of glucose and increase in concentration of Ethanol by calculating the absorbance using Ultraviolet-visible spectrophotometer. Results obtained were in agreement with the possibility of wheat to be used as a raw material for maximum yield of bioethanol.