One form of economic development efforts for waste utilization in rural communities is to utilize stem sorghum to produce food grade ethanol. Sorghum stem juice with 150 g/L of sugar concentration was fermented using conventional batch process and cell immobilization continuous process with K-carrageenan as a supporting matrix. The microorganism used was Mutated Zymomonas Mobilis to be compared with a mixture of Saccharomyces Cerevisiae and Pichia Stipitis, and a mixture of Mutated Zymomonas Mobilis and Pichia Stipitis. Ethanol in the broth, result of fermentation process, was separated in packed distillation column. Distilate of the column, still contain water and other impurities, was flown into molecular sieve for dehydration and activated carbon adsorption column to remove the other impurities to meet food grade ethanol specification. The packing used in distillation process was steel wool. For batch fermentation, the fermentation using a combination of Saccharomyces Cerevisiae and Pichia Stipitis produced the best ethanol with 12.07% of concentration, where the yield and the productivity were 63.49%, and 1.06 g/L.h, respectively. And for continuous fermentation, the best ethanol with 9.02% of concentration, where the yield and the productivity were 47.42% and 174.27 g/L.h, respectively, is obtained from fermentation using a combination of Saccharomyces Cerevisiae and Pichia Stipitis also. Fermentation using combination microorganism of Saccharomyces Cerevisiae and Pichia Stipitis produced higher concentration of ethanol, yield, and productivity than other microorganisms. Distillation, molecular sieve dehydration and adsorption process is quite successful in generating sufficient levels of ethanol with relatively low amount of impurities.
Food Grade Ethanol Production Process of Sorghum Stem Juice Using Immobilized Cells Technique