For the first time ever, a reversed order of production of bioethanol and sugar was developed indulging a fourfold increase in sugar yield owing to the newly transformed yeast.
A group of Japanese researchers from the Asahi Group Holdings Ltd and National Agriculture and the Food Research Organization’s (NARO) Kyushu Okinawa Agricultural Research has brought forward an innovation to the existing method of production of bioethanol and sugar by reversing their order of generation from the two types of sugars in sugar canes, sucrose and reducing sugar.
Conventionally, the first step is the crystallization of sucrose to table sugar, followed by the conversion of remaining reducing sugar to ethanol.
Since the reducing sugar inhibits the crystallization of sucrose to form table sugar, transforming it to ethanol by the new strain of yeast before the crystallization of sucrose allows increase in the yield of the latter.
Moreover, the newly developed yeast acts only on the reducing sugar maximizing the conversion of ethanol and the crystallization of sucrose. While some biofuel and biochemicals produced are claimed to be in competition with food production, this novel method of generating bioethanol does otherwise, making it absolutely a great potential to green production.
[via techon]
