Bioethanol is biodegradable and the most used biofuel to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions. To date, mass production of bioethanol is
mainly from sugarcane, cassava, corn, and oil palm frond.
Therefore, this paper was aimed at producing bioethanol from date
palm frond (DPF) and to study the effect of some critical parameters
such as temperature, fermentation period and pH for optimum
bioethanol yield. Saccharomyces cerevisiae was used based on its
ability to ferment the date palm frond efficiently. Pretreatment
processes of DPF was done followed by hydrolysis process of the
cellulose to fermentable sugars and finally the fermentation of
sugars to alcohol. The results showed that at lower temperature, the
fermentation is very slow. As the temperature increased, the
bioethanol yield increased. However, as the temperature increases,
particularly, above 35?, the bioethanol yield decrease because of
intercellular changes in the yeast cells, which slow the yield of
bioethanol produced. Hence, at a temperature of 35? higher yield
bioethanol was achieved. Similarly, increase in fermentation period
at constant temperature increased the bioethanol yield. At every pH
value and at constant optimum fermentation period (72 h), the
highest bioethanol yield achieved (6.85g/L). Therefore, the optimum
pH that produced the highest yield was 5.5 (6.85 g/L).