Study of alcoholic fermentation of an aqueous extract of butiá palm (Butia eriospatha (Martius) Beccari) pulp: Optimization by response surface methodology

Abstract

The fermentation conditions were established and an incomplete Box-Behnken factorial design was applied. The independent variables used were yeast extract, yeast and NH4H2PO4, and the alcohol yield obtained was optimized. The validity of the model for predictive purposes was confirmed by analysis of variance; being significant at the 5% level with a coefficient of determination (R2) of 0.82 and non-significant lack of fit (p = 0.0715). The optimization indicated a formulation containing 3.0 g L-1 yeast extract, 6.0 g L-1 yeast and 0.30 g L-1 NH4H2PO4 for an optimum ethanol yield of 77.95%. To validate the predictive equation the experiment was repeated in triplicate under optimum conditions, resulting in an average yield of 78.00%.

Keywords

• Butiá
• Box-Behnken design
• ethanol.