Research on Production of Ethanol From Sweet Sorghum Stalk by Solid-state Fermentation

Some questions existed in liquid state fermentation of sweet sorghum,such as difficult juice extracting and severe sugar loss.The solid state fermentation conditions were optimized for producing ethanol from sweet sorghum stalk.In this paper,a number of factors affecting this bioconversion were studied,time,inoculation rate,pH,nutrition salt,and so on.The sweet sorghum stalks,which had 13% total sugar and 80% water,were milled to approximately 0.3 cm long,and then were directly converted to ethanol at 35℃,in the course of 24h.Optimal ethanol yield was 0.298g/g dry sweet sorghum stalk,corresponding to 89.8% of theoretical yield,which was 0.332g/g dry sweet sorghum stalk.According to it,we would need 3.01 tons dry sweet sorghums to produce 1 ton ethanol.