Q.The most common substrate used in distilleries for the production of ethanol is _________.
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Start your 14-day free trial to unlock the full solution →Molasses, the sugar-rich waste by-product of sugar manufacture, is the cheap and widely-available substrate that Indian distilleries ferment (using yeast) to produce industrial and beverage ethanol.
Industrial production of ethanol relies on microbial fermentation, in which yeasts, chiefly Saccharomyces cerevisiae, convert fermentable sugars anaerobically into ethanol and carbon dioxide. The choice of substrate is largely an economic one, and in India (and many sugarcane-growing countries), the substrate of choice is molasses -- the thick, dark syrup that remains after sucrose crystals have been extracted from sugarcane juice during sugar manufacture. Molasses still contains a substantial amount of residual sugar, making it an inexpensive, abundant raw material that would otherwise be a low-value by-product; it is diluted, inoculated with yeast, and allowed to ferment in large vats, after which the resulting 'wash' is distilled to concentrate th …
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