Hydrolysis of Alkaline-Pretreated Banana Peel

Banana peel is one of food wastes that are rich in carbohydrate. This shows its potential as fermentation substrate including bio-ethanol. This paper presents banana peel alkaline pre-treatment and enzymatic hydrolysis. The pre-treatment was intended to prepare banana peel in order to increase hydrolysis performance. The alkaline pre-treatment used 10, 20, and 30% w/v NaOH solution and was done at 60, 70 and 80oC for 1 hour. The hydrolysis reaction was conducted using two commercial cellulose enzymes. The reaction time was varied for 3, 5, and 7 days. The best condition for pre-treatment process was one conducted using 30% NaOH solution and at 80oC. This condition resulted in cellulose content of 90.27%, and acid insoluble lignin content of 2.88%. Seven day hydrolysis time had exhibited the highest reducing sugar concentration, which is 7.2869 g/L