Production of Cellulase and Bioethanol from Lignocellulosic Materials Using Aspergillus niger and Sacchromyces cerevisiae

Agricultural cropresidues viz. sugarcane bagasse, wheat straw, wheat bran, rice husk, banana peel and orange peel have great potential to produce bioethanol as they have immense quantity of carbon source. These agricultural crop residues were pretreated with NaOH for delignification and then subjected to solid state fermentation for the production of cellulase enzyme using Aspergillus niger. Cellulase production parameter such as pH, incubation period and temperature were optimized. Activity of cellulose was checked by FPase method which was foundas 3.69U/ml fromwheat branat pH6 and at 28°C after 6 days of incubation and the cellulase was produced under these optimum conditions. Subsequently enzymatic hydrolysis was done as cellulase play a catalytic role in the hydrolysis of cellulose to glucose monomer units, so that it could be further converted into ethanol. After enzymatic hydrolysis, glucose released was inoculated with Sacchromyces cerevisiae (MCCB 0278) under optimum condition which converted glucose into ethanol. After this, fractional distillation was done for the purification of bio-ethanol produced and specific gravity was also checked.