Immobilization of Saccharomyces cerevisiae on PAN and magnetic PANnanofibers for ethanol production

Abstract

Fossil fuels are depleting in nature due to humans' increasing needs, so alternative sources of fuel production are being studied. Ethanol is being produced from various sources like agricultural sources including corn, wheat, barley, sugar beet; molasses; agricultural waste like sugarcane bagasse. Ethanol is widely used in Brazil and USA as a blend with gasoline. Research has been done and is still ongoing on for the increased, economical, and industrial level, for production of ethanol. Process optimization, immobilization of enzymes and microbial cells, co-culture of different strains, and saccharification of carbohydrates are among the various methodologies used for ethanol production. Immobilization of enzymes or whole cells is a beneficial technique that can be applied for ethanol production as it can be re-used, minimizes contamination, enhances stability and enzyme activity, easy separation of the biocatalyst, and is a cost-effective system. Whole-cell immobilization is gaining importance over immobilizing the pure enzyme as pure enzymes are expensive, adding to the production cost. It helps to maintain higher cell density and allows the higher stability of the enzymes as they are under their native conformation within the cell. Moreover, the cumbersome process of extraction and purification of pure enzymes can be avoided. So, we are immobilizing the yeast cells (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) on polyacrylonitrile (PAN) nanofibers with and without magnetic nanoparticles to study the fermentation activity for the production of ethanol. We will compare the efficiency of ethanol production by the free and the immobilized yeast cells.