Production and Determination of Fuel Ethanol Yield Using Waste Paper

Abstract

There is a vested interest in developing alternate sources offuel to fossil fuel due to lowering stocks, increasing prices and the need for environmentally sustainable energy sources. One major alternative to fossil fuels is bio-ethanol (ethanol from biomass) and waste paper represents a significant source for ethanol production. This work therefore used 3 different types of waste paper (plain white paper, newspaper, office waste paper) to produce ethanol. Each was converted to fermentable sugars using two stage dilute acid hydrolysis method and subsequent fermentation of the sugar was carried out using saccharomyces cerevisae (Baker’s yeast) as the fermenting microorganism. Plain white paper gave the best yield of ethanol after distillation with 24 % ethanol yield. Newspaper and office waste paper yielded 12.0 % and 8.4 % ethanol respectively. Factors such as the impurities (inks and pigments) were observed to have significant effect on their yields.