EFFECT OF SUGAR COMPLEXITY ON ETHANOL PRODUCTION OF BAKER’S YEAST, SACCHAROMYCES CEREVISIAE

Abstract

For yeast to be able to ferment sugar, it must first be broken down to its simplest form (a monosaccharide). We wanted to discover in this experiment whether the complexities and different types of sugar had an effect on fermentation (measured in ethanol percentage) in the presence of yeast. For our investigation, we recorded ethanol production using an ethanol sensor with three types of sugars. We added baker’s yeast, the sugar being tested, and sodium phosphate to deionized water and placed it on a stir station while measuring the ethanol production for 400 seconds on every trial. We found that corn sugar (dextrose) produced the most ethanol during the trials. However, sucrose and rice sugar produced about the same amount of ethanol and produced much less ethanol than corn sugar during the trials. This may have been because dextrose is a simple sugar.