Carbon dioxide production in yeast solutions containing baking soda or baking powder

Abstract

Baker’s yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) undergoes fermentation when added with sugar. This process produces carbon dioxide, along with ethanol and ATP. Our experiment aimed to test whether adding baking soda or baking powder, common baking ingredients, would increase the rate of carbon dioxide production. We hypothesized that the addition of baking powder would increase the production of carbon dioxide when compared to a solution containing baking soda. To conduct our experiment, we replaced the sugar commonly used in yeast fermentation with baking soda or baking powder. The addition of baking powder greatly increased the rate of carbon dioxide production. However, throughout our experiment, we realized these results cannot be attributed to fermentation, but rather the reaction of baking powder with water, due to our solution’s lack of sugar.