Comparison of Ethanol Production from Rice Straw by Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Zymomonas mobilis

The fermentation potential of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Zymomonas mobilis for ethanol fermentation from rice straw was compared in the present study. Results demonstrate that rice straw can successfully be subjected to biological pretreatment as it resulted in 80.87% and 47.64% decrease in lignin and hemicelluloses, respectively, and 29.96% increase in relative proportion of cellulose. The relative cellulose content of 56.4% resulted in 470mg/gds reducing sugars on saccharification with commercial cellulase. The fermentation of saccharified hydrolysate by S. cerevisiae and Z. mobilis produced 0.170g/g and 0.137g/g of ethanol, respectively, that establishes the fact that S. cerevisiae is an appropriate microorganism for bioethanol production from lignocellulosic biomass such as rice straw..