From the data presented in Fig. 3, we observed that the amount
of ethanol produced from this fermentation stabilized after 4 h. Also
the concentration of fermentable sugars stabilized after 4 h, while
the cell concentration increased from 108 to 109 cells/mL within 3 h
after initiating fermentation and remained within the same order
of magnitude at the end of fermentation. This small variation in
cell growth is related to the high concentration of cells at the beginning
of fermentation. Note that the fermentation time was very low
compared with the fermentation of sugarcane molasses. This level
may be related to the high concentration of glucose available in SM,
which was 22.0
±
4 g/L prior to hydrolysis and reached 101.0
±
4 g/L
following enzymatic hydrolysis. Thus, the total processing time of
SM using this method would be 14 h, including 10 h of hydrolysis
and 4 h of fermentation.