]. High
mechanical strength could make more variances during ethanol
fermentation. The optimum gel hardening time was 15 min causing
enhanced gel structure In co-immobilization studies of 0.1 g M. purpureus mycelium and5 108 cells mL1 S. cerevisiae, a hardening time of 60 and 75 min
improved starch hydrolysis, and the residual starch was 1.51 and1.33% (w v1
) at the end of fermentation. However, the residual starch was over 2% (w v1) with a hardening time of 15 and 30 min (Fig. 3b).