The Effect of Sugar Complexity Combinations on Ethanol Production in Yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) Fermentation

Abstract

Yeast fermentation is a chemical process carried out by yeast cells fermenting sugars (glucose) which produce carbon dioxide and ethanol with varied results due to temperature, sugar, and other various environmental factors. As society has evolved to utilize more bioethanol fuel as a replacement for fossil fuels, manipulating the ethanol production from yeast fermentation could be a source of producing bioethanol. With this anticipated trend, we tested ethanol production from different sugar complexities during yeast fermentation. The ethanol production was the proxy to represent fermentation. In our study, we used 250 mL bio chambers for the reactions and used the Vernier ethanol sensor to test the ethanol production. We tested combinations of dextrose with sucrose and dextrose with starch as our experimental groups and tested a pure dextrose solution for the control group. We hypothesize that the complexity of a sugar influences fermentation from Baker’s yeast and predict that more complex sugars will yield lower ethanol production. Our results supported our hypothesis as our control group of strictly dextrose reached a higher ethanol production than our dextrose-sucrose and dextrose-starch solutions with the dextrose average ethanol production being 400 ppm compared to the dextrose-sucrose solution being 290 ppm and the dextrose starch solution being 240 ppm. Our results helped us draw a correlation that as we increased the sugar complexity, the ethanol production decreased. This correlatio