Ethanol is a very important industrial chemical. In order to improve ethanol productivity using Saccharomyces cerevisiae
in fermentation from furfural process residue, we developed a process of simultaneous saccharification and
fermentation (SSF) of furfural process residue, optimizing prehydrolysis cellulase loading concentration, prehydrolysis
time, and substrate feeding strategy. The ethanol concentration obtained from the optimized process was 19.3 g/L,
corresponding 76.5% ethanol yield, achieved by running SSF for 48 h from 10% furfural process residue with prehydrolysis
at 50C for 4 h and cellulase loading of 15 FPU/g furfural process residue. For higher ethanol concentrations, fedbatch
fermentation was performed. The optimized fed-batch process increased the ethanol concentration to 37.6 g/L,
74.5% yield, obtained from 10% furfural process residue with two additions of 5% substrate at 12 and 24 h.