PRODUCTION OF BIOETHANOL FROM EGG FRUIT (Pouteria campechiana) BY YEAST FERMENTATION AND DISTILLATION

     The purpose of this study is to produce bioethanol from egg fruit (Pouteria campechiana) by yeast fermentation and distillation. Specifically, this study aims to determine the mass, volume, density, flammability, specific gravity, color and percent of ethanol extracted from star apple pulp.

     There are three treatments and each treatment has three replications. The mixture consists of 1 kg of blended egg fruit, 250 g (250 mL) of distilled water and 10 g of yeast which serves as the catalyst that converts sugar into ethanol and carbon dioxide. The mixture volume was held constant at 750 mL per bottle. The solution was fermented for two (2), three (3), and four (4) weeks. The data on volume, specific gravity, density, mass, percent of ethanol, ethanol volume and flammability were gathered.

     It was observed that as the specific gravity increases, the percent ethanol content decreases. On the other hand, the collected mean distillate increases with the length of fermentation. The trend for the corrected mean percent ethanol was increasing as the fermentation increased. Using one-way analysis of variance on a Complete Randomized Design, it was found out that there is significant difference at 5% level of significance on mass, volume, density, corrected specific gravity and corrected percent ethanol. In the flammability testing, it was observed that the flame produced by the distillates was pale blue and sometimes it had a red-orange.