Rapid growth in human civilization creates subsequent growth in agro-food industries to accomplish the needs of society. In the meantime, agro-food industries are generating enormous amount of fruit and vegetable processing wastes to be dumped into the environment. The most populated nations in the world such as China, India, the United States of America and the Philippines dispose approximately 32.0, 50.0, 15.0 and 6.53 million tons of solid waste per year, respectively. The fruit and vegetables wastes, deposited in landfills is correlated with the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG). Yet, a proper waste management strategy need to be employed to overcome these problems. Pretreatment of fruit waste (FW) is the first step towards complete utilization of these valuable substrates to bioenergy fermentation. Statistical modeling using Response Surface Methodology (RSM) could be promising for the optimization study, which can eliminate the need of multiple trials. In this study, a maximum sugar recovery of 95.01% (actual) was achieved from the FW, considering the retaining carbohydrates (701.7 mg g<sup>−1</sup>) in the pretreated FW with fair release of reducing sugars (21.92 mg g<sup>−1</sup>) in the supernatant during the pretreatment conditions of 0.2 M acetic acid, 62.5 °C and 30 min. These high sugar recoveries retained the high C/N ratios (45.34) and organic matter (93%), suitable for effective bioenergy production through the fermentation of these pretreated FW. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), thermogravimetric (TG) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis further confirmed the presence of free cellulosic portion in the pretreated FW after the disruption of complex hemicellulose. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) showed the destruction patterns of FW during acetic acid pretreatment, enhancing the porosity and the roughness of FW for better microbial attachment and utilization. Thus, acetic acid pretreated FW could be advantageous towards microbial accessibility during fermentation for better bioenergy yields.

Enhancement of bioavailability in fruit waste through the optimization of pretreatment

254th National Meeting (2017)

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