Incorporation of Sweet Sorghum Juice into Current Dry-Grind Ethanol Process

Incorporation of Sweet Sorghum Juice into Current Dry-Grind Ethanol Process

Kaelin Saul, Nana Baah Appiah-Nkansah, and Donghai Wang

Abstract

With an increase in demand for ethanol as a source of biofuel, there are many different biomass solutions being explored, such as utilizing grain sorghum and sweet sorghum juice as opposed to corn and water, for the dry-grind process. This paper conveys the optimum conditions for flour loading as well as for the hydrolysis time that will result in high ethanol yield and high fermentation efficiency. Two sets of experiments were conducted. The first consisted of varying the quantities of grain sorghum flour of 6 grams, 9 grams, 12 grams, and 15 grams whiles maintaining a constant amount of sweet sorghum juice concentrate. The results of the first study showed that the best flour loading was 6 grams of flour added to 100 milliliters (mL) of sweet sorghum juice. With optimal flour to juice ratio, the hydrolysis time can be significantly reduced from 60 min to 30 min. Future research will study the effectiveness of different enzymes (e.g. Stargen 002, alpha-amylase, etc.) on the ethanol yield and the fermentation efficiency.