Impact of changes in fermentation time, volume of yeast, and mass of plantain pseudo-stem substrate on the simultaneous saccharification and fermentation potentials of African land snail digestive juice and yeast

This study was carried out to investigate the effect of variations in mass of plantain pseudo-stem waste, volume of yeast used, and fermentation time on the product yield resulting from simultaneous saccharification and fermentation using digestive juice of African land snail and yeast. The experiment was divided into three stages which included a total of fifty seven (57) experimental setups containing sixteen (19) different combinations of the varied substrates. The results show that by varying the mass of plantain pseudo-stem waste, the production of ethanol was optimized at a mass of 250 g, which yielded 125.6 ml ± 3.5 of distillate and a percentage ethanol composition of 25.0 ± 3.6. While varying the volume of yeast used between 50 and 250 ml, with 250 g of plantain pseudo-stem waste, 250 ml of snail digestive juice and 4 g garlic for 24 h, acetic acid was detected in the setup containing 200 ml of yeast, but was not detected in similar experimental setups containing 6 g garlic. The optimum ethanol production while varying the volume of yeast slurry was recorded to be 182.3 ml ± 4.9 of distillate with 28.0% ± 1.0 ethanol composition. Variations in fermentation periods had the greatest impact on the percentage composition of ethanol and the volume of ethanol produced showing the best fermentation period for obtaining optimal ethanol production to be at 96 h. These findings show that the best specifications for the optimum production of ethanol from a 250 g of plantain pseudo-stem waste using 250 ml snail digestive, are 200 ml of yeast slurry, 6 g of garlic to ferment for a period of 96 h.