Simultaneous saccharification and fermentation of woody stem Prosopis juliflora by Zymomonas mobilis for the production of cellulosic ethanol

Pre-treatment of lignocellulosic biomass is found to be a pivotal task in the production of biofuels. In this study, woody stem Prosopis juliflora initially was subjected to auto hydrolysis followed by nitric acid treatment (3%(v/v)) and sonication. Further a combination of auto hydrolysis coupled with nitric acid treatment (3%(v/v)) followed by sonication was carried out. The outcome of these two main processes was to ascertain the maximum production of cellulose and hemicelluloses from lignocellulosic biomass and use it for simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF) with commercially available enzyme and gram negative bacteria Zymomonas mobilis in the production of cellulosic ethanol. The process parameters such as pH, temperature, substrate concentration and inoculum volume in the production of cellulosic ethanol were investigated. The maximum bioethanol concentration produced by fermentation of woody stem Prosopis juliflora using Zymomonas mobilis was found to be 16.40 g/l.