The Feasibility of

Using Banana Waste

Extract as Alternative
Fuel
Members:
Clarence O. Carandang
Arlene M. Baldoza
Roylan A.Semira
Fe Hernandez
Mhar ALdwin S. Perez
Abigael Golfo
Anna Margarita Año
 Chapter I

This chapter will include the introduction to our product. To the objective which
will show our main goal by doing this research. To the significance of the study which
will show the benefits of our study to students, teachers, our school, the Republic of the
Philippines and future researchers. To the scope and limitations in which it show the limit
and the coverage of our study and the definition of terms that will help the readers to
easily understand the terminologies or difficult words that they might encounter
throughout the final paper.

Introduction:

Philippines are known for having a huge production of banana fruit to the local
market and one of the huge exporters includes in the subtropical countries that supply
banana in the world market. Banana is a botanical berry produced by several kinds of
large herbaceous species of flowering plant (musacea), and in order to collect banana
fruit from the banana tree, its stem needs to be cut down; as a result, there is huge banana
waste after the harvesting process of bananas. Not only the banana trees are the biggest
waste that the Philippines had; banana peels also became waste after consuming it so we
conduct a research to find out what are the possibilities that can be done using banana
wastes. We've came up on this project of producing an alternative fuel by using the
extracted banana wastes to be processed to become a bioethanol. After conducting
multiple researches, there are several types of biomass from banana plantations, some
example are wasted fruits, stems, leaves which are used as biomass for fuel regeneration.
There is information that there is a high concentration of cellulose with low lignin content
and its easy availability makes banana stem as potential lignocellulose biomass which
could be used for the production of bioethanol. The composition of BPS on dry are
holocellulose – 72.71, klason lignin – 8.88%, acid soluble lignin – 1%, ash content –
8.2% extracts – 3.05% and petin – 0.27% Therefore, using banana extract can be made as
a bioethanol which can surely contain enough content of alcohol to create fuel in the
process of denaturing. From this information, producing biofuel from banana waste can
be possible and useful to a rising country like Philippines; in addition introducing biofuel
to the Philippines may solve a biggest problem in demand of petroleum or gasoline and to
the world market in terms of petroleum.
For this experiment, first is by collecting banana sap from the rotten trees must be
a four liters of pure sap. Next, banana sap should be filtered for the remaining substrate or
solid materials using a cloth for filtering. Next is by mixing some compounds like yeast
and sugar for faster fermentation. We use sugar for fast carbonation and yeast for
fermentation. After 10 days from the fermentation process the collected wash will be
distilled in our improvised distiller. For the collected samples we tested it by using
hydrometer to measure its exact alcohol content.

Significance of the study:

Students:
Students will benefit after creating of an alternative fuel, we can develop the
innovativeness and skills of students to create different technologies and simple
machineries that can work all along with the alternative fuel we had made. They will also
learn the true importance of conserving energy to save Earth.

Teachers:
Teachers will benefit in the sense that they can learn several things by teaching
their students the several ways of conserving energy on Earth by simply creating
alternative fuel made out of organic materials just like what we had made, the banana
waste. It is such a great conservation of energy if we can contribute to save mother Earth.

School:
School will benefit in the way that they can recommend the use of alternative fuel
made out of banana waste extract to our city to make it the most Eco –friendly place that
will help save the gradual decrease of energy sources on Earth.
Republic of the Philippines:
The republic of the Philippines will be benefited in the way that we can contribute
to the production of fuel as we can possibly create gasoline named E10 and E85. The
following fuels are both made up of bioethanol that is similar to what we’ve made. We
can resolve the problem of decreasing petroleum production of our country through the
help of our alternative fuel.

Future researchers:
Future researchers will greatly benefit through our project because they might
upgrade and make our research more effective than we had made and the world will no
longer lack of energy source. Also they can help the conservation of energy.

Objectives:
We need to create an alternative fuel to help the conservation of energy and to
contribute to the Science and Technology in the sense that we can produce the alternative
fuel that might help machineries to work more efficient than ever.

Scope and Limitations:

The research will only focus on making the alternative fuel using only the
extracted liquid came from banana stems. Then, research's experiments will only test the
feasibility of using the alternative fuel that will be testing it on simple machinery.

Definition of terms:

Denature – to mix the gasoline and bioethanol to make fuel.

Gradual – slow movement of anything that might harm or benefit.

Feasibility – it means the effectiveness of an object or a substance.

Eco-Friendly – is the term used for a place, thing or people that helps conserve energy
and helps by making the Earth grow and become more green and beautiful.

Distillation – this is process includes the vaporization of any liquid to turn it into a useful
chemical that helps the innovation of simple machineries and technologies. The
distillation process allows a certain chemical to turn it into a useful chemical that contains
enough alcohol content.

Bioethanol – a type of fuel from a decaying or processed thing from fermentation to

distillations.

Lignin – part of plant came from the part of a wood or plants.

Fermentation – is the process of fermenting a mixture in a period of time.

Flammability - the test for alcohol content after the distillation process.

Substrate- a solid particle came from the trees that being processed.

Bio-energy- energy from a biomass which is the biodegradable fraction of products,

waste and residues from agriculture like vegetable and animal origin were processed and
became energy.

Biofuel- is the fuel created from biomass. This term refer to a liquid substance such as
ethanol and biodiesel that can be used for machinery.

Yeast- microscopic fungus consisting of oval cells that reproduced by budding and
capable of converting sugar into carbon.

Banana wash- the mixture of yeast, sugar and banana waste extract fermented.

Hydrometer- device used to measure the alcohol content.

Run- the distilled bananas wash.

Denaturing- a natural qualities; this is to change the nature by adding an obnoxious
substance.

Lignocellulose- the woody material that gives plant their rigidity and structure comprises
three main type of carbon – based polymer cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin –
collectively.

Extraction- the process of extraction is the separation of solid substance and liquid
substance, therefore from the banana waste, we extract the waste to collect an amount
that can be used enough to produce a bioethanol.

Obnoxious substances- are harmful chemicals such as gasoline, petroleum and solvent.
 Chapter II

Review of related articles

This chapter includes foreign and local literature that contains important articles
and phrases on different authors that connects and supports our research. The evidences
we use is ranged from the year 2014 to 2018.

According to Sean and Johann (2015) micro-organisms use for bioethanol

production must have the ability to with stand high level of acidity, temperature, high
concentration of ethanol in fermentation and it must be able to utilize high concentration
of sugar and also ferment varieties of sugars.
As stated by Sean and Johann bacteria or organisms that are present during
fermentation should withstand the temperature or the process of producing ethanol to fuel
and has the capabilities of surviving the procedures.

According to Kravchenko et al., (2014) further treatment in order to burn in

combination with gasoline in gasoline engines, dehydration of the ethanol to be used as a
fuel must be done. Most of the water is removed by distillation, but the purity is limited
to 95-96% due to formation of a low boiling water ethanol zoetrope.95-5% v/v ethanol,
3.3% v/v water mixture may be used as a fuel alone but unlike anhydrous ethanol, is
immiscible in gasoline so the water fraction is typically removed.
Stated by Kravchenko et al, to obtain the ethanol from the wash, the wash should
take distillation process until we get an amount that can produced as fuel.

According to Martin et al., (2014) pre-treatment is typically performed at around

200⁰C, but if acid catalyst are used the process can be run at lower temperatures the
solvents must be removed from the system to avoid inhibition of enzymatic hydrolysis
and fermentation, and should be recycled to reduce operational cost. The most economic
option is to use low-molecular alcohols, but the risk of operations with volatile and
flammable solvents has motivated the interest for non-volatile organic compounds.
From martin et al the processed wash should takes about 200⁰ C to avoid loosing
of the enzymes that produced carbons.

According to Pandey et al., (2013) alcohols are important disinfectant: they

evaporate quickly without leaving any residue. They are capable of dissolving lipids
which makes them effective against lipid- wrapped viral and bacterial cells but are
ineffective against spores. They are inexpensive and relatively easy to handle, although
their vapors are flammable it is usually used in concentration of 70% because higher
concentration evaporates too quickly and lower concentration are ineffective.

According to Shubhra et al., (2014) during ethanol fermentation, glucose is

decomposed into ethanol and carbon dioxide, water and heat. Plants also contain other
sugars apart from fermented. Ethanol may also be produced industrially from ethane
(ethylene) by the addition of water to the bond in the presence of acid which can catalase
the reaction but is not consumed.

According to FAO STAT (2015) following the oil crisis of 1970, biofuels were
perceived in many countries as a realistic solution to oil resources dependence problem.
Moreover the mixture usage with traditional fuels made it possible to consider the gain on
the levels of vehicles pollutant emission. The oil counter lows of 1986 and the too high
maintenance and cost slowed down their development. To date, bioethanol is seen and the
main biofuels for the future. It is subject to a significant industrial development around
the world, and can be produced by chemical synthesis of fermentation.

According to Aditiya et al., (2016) for instance we can produce ethanol after
anaerobic fermentation by microorganisms such as S.cereviside. In addition to their
sugars resource and moderately long conservation period, dates offer many technological
possibilities. They are seen as raw materials for the production of different metabolites,
biopolymers, organic acids, antibiotics, amino acids, enzyme, bakery yeast, and also the
butane and hydrogen.

According to Durlubh Kumar Sharma 2018 production of bio-ethanol from fruit

waste (banana, papaya, pineapple and mango peel) there a huge amount of fruit waste are
available as sugar laden wastes world over. In fact there is a need to recover value added
products from these wastes. Fruit wastes are rich in sugars and carbohydrates which can
be recovered and utilized for the production of bioethanol.

According to Abdullah Ahmad (2015) biofuel has been gaining momentum in

terms of research and development. Since there are virus factors such as recent rise in oil
price, support from government studies, and growing concern about global warming
make biofuel a focal point of the public researchers. The recent studies had come without
a new method for the production of ethanol using banana peel. Hence, this research study
focuses on optimizing the ethanol production from banana peel using different type of
banana peel that is widely available in Malaysia. The findings of the study can be used as
a basis for comparison with other literature readings on the banana peel ethanol
production having different operating conditions and parameters.

According to Janani Ketzi (2013) production of ethanol fermented from

renewable source for fuel or fuel additives are known as bioethanol. Since the need of
bioethanol has been increasing, the production of ethanol must be increased using
cheaper and eco-friendly raw material. On the basis of this characteristic fruit waste can
be considered as cheaper and eco-friendly. On this study, different fruit wastes were used
as a raw material for the production of bio ethanol by using Saccharomy cescerevisiae
and the results were compared. The result of this work showed that the right of bioethanol
production through fermentation of great fruit waste by Saccharomy cescerevisiae
(baker’s yeast) yields in very at pH 5.4 temperature 30⁰C, specific gravity 0.872, and
concentration of about 6.21% than other fruit wastes. The results of this study suggest
that waste from fruit that contain permeable sugar should not be discarded in to our
environment, but should be converted to useful products by bioethanol that can serve as
an alternative energy source.

According to R.C. Jagessar, C. Fraser (2015) can be used for variety of purpose,
of which blending with gasoline to produce gas alcohol to power automobile is the
increase. Ethanol can be obtained via by the fermentation of glucose or sucrose under the
influence of saccharomyces cervisae at room temperature or acid hydrolysis of
lignocellulose material followed by subsequent fermentation.

According to Durlubh kumar Sharma (2018) lignocellulose raw materials which

include fruit and vegetable waste, forestry waste, agro-residues, Msw etc. can be used to
produce bioethanol. Fruit wastes are rich in cellulose and hemicellulose ad have low
tignin content, which are mostly loosely placed there between cellulose and
hemicellulose. This makes these wastes interesting for bioethanol production.

Local
According to Raymond Sanchez Orozco (2014) to use a new lignocellulosic
bioresource that has several attractive agro-energy features for ethanol production, the
chemical characterizations and compositional analysis of several fruit waste were carried
out. Banana were studied to determine their general biomass characteristics and to
provide detailed analysis of their chemical structures.

Summary

In this related article that tackles all about the research of these authors are
bioethanol, the production of ethanol and composition of banana. With these studies we
can find that the production of bioethanol through the banana extract could be possible
with the help of tools and equipment that undergoes to the proper process and procedures
 Chapter III

Materials, methods, process

This chapter includes the methodology which will explain what are the different
techniques and methods we are going to use on doing the experimentation. Next is the
material that includes all the things we will use throughout the process. Lastly was the
procedure or the step by step process of the experimentation.

Materials
 4.25 gallons of Banana waste extract
 water
 Knife
 4 kilos of sugar
 1 pack of dry active yeast
 Container
 Stove
 Improvised distiller
 Hydrometer alcohol tester
 Test tube

Methods

1. Extraction- the process of extraction is the separation of solid substance and liquid
substance, therefore from the banana waste, we extract the waste to collect an
amount that can be used enough to produce a bioethanol.

2. Filtration- after an extraction process the amount collected will be filtered in a

cloth to remove huge amount of substrate or solid materials that may affect our
final product.
 3. Mixing- mixing the materials such as sugar, yeast and the banana waste extract
and let it sit for a day and ferment.

4. Fermentation- fermentation process takes about 7-10 days.

5. Distillation- the process of evaporation to collect the vaporized product will

gathered the final product, with the distillation process we will identify the
amount of alcohol content.

Process
1. Extraction: prepare rotten banana waste and cut it with a knife, after cutting it into
small parts, add 4 liters of water and simmer down. After 30 minutes of boiling
the banana waste let it cool for about an hour. After an hour squeeze the banana
waste to collect an amount of 4.25 gallons of banana waste extract.

2. Filtration: after an extraction process the amount collected will be filtered in a

cloth to remove huge amount of substrate or solid waste from the banana. This
will allow to strain all the unnecessary amount of solid particles from the banana
waste

3. Mixing: mix 4 kilos of white sugar, pack of dry active yeast and the banana waste
extract and let it sit for a day and ferment.

4. Fermentation: to ferment the banana the mixture should be in a closed container

and put a fermentation lock, this allows the carbon to be release without entering
of the oxygen to prevent the yeast to die. The fermentation process takes about 7-
10 days.

5. Distillation: after the 10th day of fermentation harvesting the fermented banana
washes. Set on the improvised distiller to distill or collect the alcohol from the
 wash. Set the temp to 200⁰C and the timer to 3 hours. Repeat this until the bucket
will be empty.

6. Test: for testing the final product we needed hydrometer. This will show the level
of the alcohol content in the wash.

Documentation

Chapter IV

Results and discussion

This chapter includes results of the experimentation and analyzation of produced
banana wash. The discussion of the data will be given into explanation form and the
documentation of the process.

The first fermented banana waste extract distilled into two run, the first batch has
a level of alcohol content refer as run#1 and the second batch as refer as run#2 shown in
the figure1. Below
 Fig1. Shows the level of alcohol based from the distillation process of run#1 and run#2

The figure shows that there is a huge absence of alcohol in the process of fermenting the
banana waste extract to completely give an amount of alcohol content that can run into
our engines. It gives an amount of 1-4% of alcohol not enough to denature. This is the
process of mixing obnoxious substance with the right amount of alcohol and gasoline. As
our produced wash gives a 1-4% percent of alcohol and 96% are water, if denaturing
occurs there will be a separation when our 4% wash is mixed with the gasoline.

The second graph below is the data collected from the second trial to obtain an
amount of alcohol to complete the process of denature.
 .Figure2. Data collected from the second trial of the banana wash

We conduct a second trial to see if there is a change in the result we made from
our first trial. As we conduct our second trial it shows that there is an average of 20%
alcohol content present in the first run .And as the distillation process takes time the
alcohol content it has lessen up to 10%, compare to the first trial it gives a huge amount
of alcohol but still it is insufficient to provide enough alcohol to be denature and become
gasoline.

Chapter V

Conclusion and Recommendation

In this chapter the conclusion of the experimentation will be discussed and the
recommendation or action to be done to make this project more productive.

Conclusion
Based from the data collected and analyzed the results of the process shows quite
less alcohol content as unexpected it should be. The wash must not be exposed to oxygen
when fermenting. This phenomenon may cause an effect to the results of having alcohol
content.

Recommendation

This research aims to find a suitable solution to the demand of fuels and waste
that may help Filipinos in the future. We recommend people to follow every single
procedure to make sure that the proper process will result to the expected amount of
alcohol.

The yeast is a very delicate bacterium; these bacteria is vulnerable to the oxygen
or other bacteria around it, once it was exposed or mixed with other substance the yeast
will die, recommended that all the materials and ingredients should be sterilized or
distilled for the yeast to survive to its environment. Yeast is the most important substance
when it comes to fermentation it helps to transform enzyme to carbon.

This experimentation takes time to be processed, recommend that further research

and experimentation is needed to provide the amount of alcohol needed in this project.