Effectiveness of Tannin Removal by Alkaline Pretreatment on Sorghum Ethanol Production

Sorghum has been proposed as a complement or replacement for corn in ethanol production. One difference between sorghum and corn is the presence of tannins, which may affect enzymatic activity. High-tannin sorghum hybrid XM217 was used to analyze the effect of tannin removal by the alkaline pretreatment of sorghum for ethanol production. A laboratory-scale dry-milling process was used on treated sorghum/corn blends to generate mash that was fermented by Saccharomyces cerevisiae and then compared to a 100% untreated sorghum control. Cellulase was added to a similar set of mash to determine the feasibility of the tannin-removal treatment as a pretreatment method for cellulosic ethanol production. Theoretical ethanol yield increased from 68.2 +/- 1.5% to 78.5 +/- 2.5% for alkaline-pretreated sorghum vs. untreated sorghum, with a corresponding increase in mean ethanol concentrations from 8.02 +/- 0.15 to 9.39 +/- 0.26% w/v. The average theoretical ethanol yield increased from 69.8 +/- 1.7% to 94.6 +/- 1.9% when using cellulase with untreated and treated sorghum. The use of alkaline tannin removal resulted in a significant increase in the theoretical ethanol yield obtained when using 100% sorghum, when compared to the theoretical ethanol yield obtained when using 100% corn. The combination of cellulase and alkaline tannin removal improved the yield of ethanol in all cases compared to the experiments without cellulase.