Enhancing the silica-magnetic catalyst-assisted bioethanol production from biowaste via ultrasonics

Abstract

The current study describes the fabrication of nano-catalyst by embedding the magnetic nanoparticles as a core in silica shell to obtain the structure of Fe3O4@SiO2 and then functionalized with sulfonyl groups. The intrinsic properties of nano-catalysts were scrutinized for morphological, crystal structure, elemental and chemical bonding analysis using SEM, XRD, EDS and FT-IR, respectively. The acid density and saturation magnetization were observed to be 0.20 mmol g−1 and 56 emu g−1, respectively. In this study, banana peel waste was pre-treated and hydrolyzed into total reducing the sugar by sulfonated silica magnetic catalyst. A single-factor optimization method has also been used to investigate the influence of catalyst/solid quantity, reaction temperature and time on reducing sugar. The optimum sugar-reducing yield of about 73% was achieved with 0.3% (w/v) of catalyst loading at 140 °C for 2 h. In addition, the spent sulfonated silica catalyst was regenerated and reused up to 3 times. The fermentation by Saccharomyces cerevisiae was conducted with banana peel hydrolysate, and fermentation efficiency reached 83% after 48 h. Graphical abstract: [Figure not available: see fulltext.]. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.