(37c) Production of Ethanol from Agroindustrial Waste of Banana Crop

The fossil fuels are one of the principal reasons of the gases greenhouse effect and in spite of be considering to be limited resources, the global economy depends almost in its entirety on them, reasons that force to extend the energetic perspective and to find one that is sustainable; the biofuels, use as raw material biomass, renewable source of energy of which it is possible to obtain ethanol which presents several advantages as gas decrease greenhouse effect and increase in octane rating. On the other hand, in Colombia the banana is a representative food considered as basic product and of export reaching 3.011.784 tons in production, being the coffee zone it is the most important sector with 18.65 % followed by Tolima, Meta, and Antioquia with 9 %.

His culture involves processes as the defoliation, "descalcetamiento" and chop off, which besides driving to a good production, eliminate risks of microbiological and chemical pollution. Nevertheless, the above mentioned processes represent a great quantity of organic waste, which due to his slow degradation turn not only into environmental but economic problem for the cost of his residual managing. Due to the agronomic practice of the cut of the plant alone he takes advantage of his fruit, which constitutes approximately 12 % of the total weight, generating organic residues like that that are in the main leaves, pseudo stems and not suitable remains of fruit for consumption. On big quantities of residues having generated, these throw themselves indiscriminately near the shores of water bodies, altering the physical and chemical properties of the water or turning into an area of reproduction of plagues. This type of work places inside a plan of investigative young persons. Basically the proyect seeks to evaluate the obtaining of bioethanol from the agro industrial waste of the culture of banana in Colombia. In this investigation there was used a biochemical process, which contains the stages of pretreatment, hydrolysis, fermentation and distillation.

A characterization of the raw material realized in this case the waste obtained of the culture of banana obtaining percentages like that of dampness, matter it dries, mineral fraction, organic fraction, lignin, calcium, between others. Where is outlined a percentage of cellulose obtained of 50, 4 %. Then an analysis fulfilled factorial 2² based on 3 repetitions for determination of pretreatment, where the variables were controlled: Concentration of reactive and Time fermentation, while they kept constant Temperature of fermentation and used microorganism that was Sacharomyces Cerevisiae. The characterization of the products is realized by means of the use of infrared spectra and index of refraction, In addition there measures up the total of resources used in the process of fermentation and purification, then to verify the energy efficiency of the system.