DOI: 10.36347/sajb.2018.v06i12.004

Pages: 761-765

Bioethanol was produced from watermelon fruit peels using acid hydrolysis. The peels were pretreated by Steam expulsion method at 121 oC for 1 hour. Hydrolysis was carried out using 0.5%, 1%, 1.5%, 2% and 2.5% sulphuric acid with varying temperature and time. Dried active baker‘s yeast strain (Sacchromyces cerevisiae) was used for fermentation. The concentration of the bioethanol produced was determined using Potassium Dichromate method. After hydrolysis, the reducing sugar concentration was determined using the Dinitrosalicylic acid (DNS) colorimetric method for 5 days; 1.04±0.02 g/L was the highest yield of reducing sugar after pretreated samples were hydrolyzed with 2.5% sulfuric acid at 60oC for 30 minutes. The results revealed that there is significance difference (p<0.05) in the yields of the reducing sugar produced after optimizing the samples. Base on the above findings, the highest bioethanol yield after hydrolysates were fermented with Sacchromyces cerevisiae was 0.13 ± 0.017 mg/L. This Study revealed that watermelon fruit peels are suitable agricultural wastes product for Bioethanol production.