Lignocellulosic Material from Main Indonesian Plantation Commodity as the Feedstock for Fermentable Sugar in Biofuel Production

Abstract

Since the long history of Indonesia, the majority of Indonesian residence are working as farmers as the primary job. Plantation in Indonesia supplies the world market in remarkable amount. There are several main commodity holding important role in Indonesian agriculture: rice, sugarcane, coffee, cocoa, cassava, and tobacco. Those products are cultivated in a large amount almost in each district and consequently generating a large amount of agricultural waste from the postharvesting process. The residue of those commodity were studied in this paper, including rice husks, sugarcane bagasse,

spent coffee ground, cocoa pod husks, cassava peels, and tobacco stalks. They contain mostly cellulose of 29.1

- 57.4 % and hemicellulose of 7.49 - 35.5 % which are convertible to fermentable sugar. The lignin content in the range of 10.9 - 27.3 % which produces inhibitors in sugar and alcohol production. The utilization of this feedstock to produce biobutanol and bioethanol requires delignification process to prevent the inhibitor formation. Sequentially, hydrolysis is necessary to convert the cellulose and hemicellulose to fermentable sugars completely by using enzymatic or chemical process. Finally fermentation can be performed to produce bioethanol by yeast or biobutanol by Clostridium sp. The uniformity of the main constituent and the physical characteristic have made them potential to be efficiently utilized in heterogeneous mixture to produce large capacity of biobutanol and bioethanol.