Comparative Study of Ethanol Production from Microbial Pretreated Agricultural Residues

Bioconversion offers a cheap and safe method of not only disposing the agricultural residues, but also it has the potential to convert lignocellulosic wastes into usable forms such as reducing sugars that could be used for ethanol production. This paper reports a preliminary study on the microbial pretreatment and fermentation of the agricultural residues like wheat straw, rice straw, rice husk and bagasse. A combination of six different fungi obtained from screening were used for pretreatment and Saccharomyces cereviseae(NCIM 3095) was used for carrying out fermentation. In case of Wheat straw and rice straw, pretreatment with Aspergillus niger and Aspergillus awamori and fermentation yielded highest amount of ethanol(2.5gl^-1 2.2g l^-1 respectively ), for rice husk and bagasse it was with Aspergillus awamori and Pleurotus sajor-caju (8.5g l^-1 9.8g l^-1 respectively ).