Microwave Assisted Hydrolysis of Cellulose to Release Sugars from Pongamia Oil Cake for its use in Bioethanol Production

Biomass based biofuels has been a promising alternative source of energy for the past few decades. The major hurdle is the technologies of production and challenges involved in processing time. This work describes the use microwave radiation to produce bioethanol from a byproduct of biodiesel industry viz., Pongamia pinnata oil seed cake. The powdered oil cake was acid treated under microwave radiation for release of reducing sugars. The kinetics of the microwave process was studied and found that microwave mediated process accelerates the acid hydrolysis of oil cake in comparison with conventional heating method. Further, the multistage process for microwave mediated acid hydrolysis was adapted to increase the overall yield. The yield did not improve beyond 3 stages. The hydrolysate obtained was fermented to produce bioethanol using Saccharomyces cerevisiae.