Research on immobilization carrier on ethanol fermentation from food waste

Resource technology for food waste has become the research hot recently. To perform ethanol fermentation from food waste could realize energy recovery and pollution prevention. This study investigated the effects of two kinds of immobilization carriers, loofa sponge and fiber ball on ethanol fermentation from food waste. The seven runs of fermentation experiments demonstrated that the fermentation broth with fiber ball showed an increase of residue sugar concentration (31.98g/l) and a decrease of sugar utilization ratio (60.02%) in the fourth run. When it came to the seventh run of experiment, the sugar utilization ratio was only 49.04%, which showed that the fermentation yield by the yeast decreased significantly. While the fermentation by loofa sponge revealed stable fermentation efficiency, the sugar utilization ratio were all above 80%. The effect of size and inoculum for loofa sponge showed that 3 gram dry loofa sponge in 100 ml saccharification liquid was suitable. While the size had little effect on the fermentation.