Sugar? Yeast Please!

Abstract

Yeast is becoming increasingly more popular as an aid in a variety of industrial processes due to its ability to produce ethanol (French 2015). It is in the best interest of every company utilizing yeast to use the most efficient and the most cost effective sugar as fuel. In our experiment, we tested the difference in ethanol production using two different types of sugars – dextrose and lactose. We hypothesized that lactose would result in greater ethanol production when compared to dextrose because lactose is a more complex sugar.