Different particle size study of castor deoiled cake for biofuel production with an environmental sustainability perspective

Agro-industrial waste material such as non-edible deoiled Castor bean cake (CBC) is one of the most abundant sources for bioethanol demonstrating the feasibility of utilizing bioethanol as commercial biofuel. This is an alternative to mitigate fossil fuel dependence and carbon dioxide accumulation in the atmosphere. The CBC was pretreated with the help of thionyl chloride at a temperature of 35 °C for residence time 25 min. Subsequently, CBC substrate obtained from pretreatment was subjected to enzymatic hydrolysis with T. viride concentration varying from 0.5 to 5 g L(−1) at 35 °C, pH 6 for 48 h. Under optimized conditions the process integrating pretreatment followed by enzymatic hydrolysis for 48 h at 35 °C with pH 7 resulted in 76 g L(−1) of reducing sugars from 100 g CBC. The obtained sugar was further fermented at 30 °C for 72 h with saccharomyces cerevisiae as a fermenting media which yields 37.5 g L(−1) of bioethanol. A study of different particle sizes of CBC with BSS-5, BSS-10, BSS-20 was done for efficient enzymatic hydrolysis and fermentation into bioethanol. On a pilot-scale 375 g L(−1) of bioethanol was obtained from 1 kg of CBC with the same reaction conditions. The present study demonstrates optimized solid: liquid ratio 1:2 for hydrolysis, fermentation process, and the production cost for bioethanol per L. Figure S1 represents graphical abstract for the production of bioethanol from CBC in supplementary information.