From Fig. 1, we observed that the process stabilized following 9 h
of fermentation, both with respect to the ethanol production and
the consumption of sugars. The cell growth was very low, remaining
within an order of magnitude of 108 cells/mL, which was expected
due to the high cell concentration at the beginning of the fermentation.
This concentration was adopted in order to compare with
the alcoholic fermentation of sugarcane juice using high concentrations
of yeast. Therefore, a 9 h fermentation was chosen for the
next round of experiments.