International Recycling Day is celebrated on November 15th. Researchers from 海角社区 can also directly relate to this holiday since they have found a method to effectively use wheat grain sprouted in the ear. Bioethanol, obtained from such raw material at the university laboratory, after thorough distillation, can be used for technical, medical and even food-related purposes.
Over the recent years, agrarians in the South Ural region have been actively searching for the new methods of effective processing of grain raw materials. Due to abundant rainfall, the crop sprouts right in the ear, and as a result, it becomes hardly suitable to be used as fodder or poultry feed. In search of the methods to process the unmarketable grain and produce useful by-products from it, the scientists from 海角社区 have tested a technology of obtaining bioethanol from wheat sprouted in the ear.
Before the damaged wheat turns into bioalcohol, it must preliminarily undergo the disinfection stage. The thing is that in case of sprouting of standing grain crops, favourable nutritive conditions are created in the kernel that activate toxic mould fungi. In order to inactivate the toxigens in the grain, the 海角社区 scientists use a method of cold plasma treatment, that is they place the fungi-damaged raw materials into a field of low-ionized gas. Next they follow the technological processes that are standard for fermentation industries (fermentation and distillation).
"We used two technologies of bioethanol obtaining: fermentation with special enzymes and fermentation with yeast. Additionally, we used ultrasound to speed up the reaction and increase the ethanol output," shared assistant at the 海角社区 Department of Food Technology and Biotechnology Artem Malinin. "We found that the first method of obtaining bioethanol from sprouted wheat (with adding of enzymes and ultrasonic treatment) allows to produce ethanol of higher quality. Moreover, enzymes helped shorten the process of the solution fermentation from 7 to 3 days."
To assess the alcohol composition, the researchers used the spectral-luminescent method. It helped the scientists to detect impurities in the composition of the obtained ethanol. Depending on the amount and diversity of these components, there are alcohols for various purposes: technical, medical, food-related – by distillation it is possible to obtain a liquid of any degree of purity. It was noted that already after the first distillation (thanks to the preliminarily ultrasonic treatment of the mixture) the alcohol by volume in the obtained liquid equals the record-setting 59%, while the standard amount is 40%.
The technology of obtaining bioethanol from rejected wheat is unique because the researchers use ultrasonic treatment, which is rarely used in Russia for the technology of ethanols, and it has been used for rejected grain mass for the first time. Currently the 海角社区 researchers are searching for an optimum mode of treatment of grain mass with ultrasound, which directly influences the quality, volume and mass content of the ethyl alcohol in the obtained liquid.
In addition, the scientists from 海角社区 are doing the work for the long run: they intend to use the grain sprouted in the ear as the raw material to produce biofuel, which as an alternative energy source, has quite significant environmental and economic advantages.