Journal of Biotechnology & Biomaterials
Open Access

Abstract

Water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipies) is a noxious weed with tremendous high growing capacity. Owing to its high content of hemicellulose (30-55% of dry weight), it could be used up for xylose production, which in turn could be further converted to xylitol. Water Hyacinth biomass is available in abundance in certain parts of the world making it a suitable feedstock for distributed xylitol production. The present study entails the optimization of xylose yield by response surface methodology for pretreatment of water hyacinth biomass to maximize yield of xylose. Central composite rotatable design (CCRD) was applied to investigate and analyze the interaction effects of the four independent process variables soaking time, acid concentration, agitation speed and treatment time. Batch fermentation was carried out by supplementing the treated water hyacinth hydrolysate with the inoculums in a 500 mL Erlenmeyer flask in a incubator shaker at 30�º C at 200 rev min-1 for a period of 72 hours at pH level of 5. Samples were taken out at regular intervals to determine the concentration of xylitol and remaining xylose. Batch fermentation of 64.82 g/l of sugars present in concentrated water hyacinth hemicellulose hydrolysate was performed using 10% (v/v) Pichia stipitis, which produced maximum xylitol concentration of 22.5g/l at 48 hours with yield of 0.45 g xylitol/g xylose.

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