STUDIES ON THE STABILITY OF IMMOBILIZED WHOLE CELL SYSTEMS

Abstract

Energy consumption is directly related to the industrial development. Due to rapid depletion of the reserves of conventional sources of conventional energy sources, namely coal and petroleum, it is of paramount importance to exploit alternate non conventional and renewable sources of energy to sustain the development activities. One of the most potential sources of energy and chemical feedstock to industry may be cellulosic materials and carbohydrates available from agricultural wastes/bye-products. Bioconversion of cellulose and carbohydrates to ethanol and other chemicals are known to people for centuries. Ethanol is a starting point for diverse chemical industries. From the available molasses from sugar indu-tries, roughly 500 million litres of alcohol may be produced. In order to increase availability of alcohol at a cheaper price, the technology of alcohol production from sugar/ molasses should be continually updated. One of the recent developments at the laboratory scale is to use immobilized cells, instead of free cell in conventional fermentation process, for the fermentation of reducing sugar to alcohol. If adapted to large scale production, immobilized cell technology may prove to be a boon to the fermentation industry