SUMMARY

oleh: Agil Ramadhan Primasto (1206223940)

Fossil fuel dependence has caused many environmental issues such as global warming, oil spills, etc. The heightened awareness of those environmental issues has led into the increased interest in development of renewable alternative energy. Bioethanol is one from many renewable alternative energy which got the spotlight. Bioethanol produced from biomass which is essentially food. However, bioethanol production from food-crop-based biomass has led into food security problem. People keep on looking for the proper source of biomass to produce bioethanol, the abundant and renewable one. Macroalgae Sargassum spp., an abundant and carbon-neutral renewable resource is now considered as the third generation of biomass which can be used for the production of bioethanol. The advantages of using this Sargassum spp. are: reduced the competition with agricultural food and food crops, high yield, non dependence on pesticides and fertilizer, also non dependence on farmland and freshwater. In addition, Sargassum spp. consumes large amount of CO2 which could reduce the CO2 level on the atmosphere and automatically helps reducing global warming. Sargassum spp. is widely distributed in tropical and subtropical seas. There are several methods we could do to study more about the potential this Sargassum spp. has as the biomass source for bioethanol production, such as: dilute acid pretreatment, enzyme saccharification, and fermentation. From those three methods, the optimal pretreatment conditions are identified and the ethanol conversion rates are measured. The results from applying those three methods are: The optimal acid pretreatment condition achieved in terms of glucose and reducing sugar yields is 3.44.6% (w/v) H2SO4 concentration, 115 C and 1.50 h (the pretreated biomass is then hydrolyzed with cellulase enzyme system supplemented with -glucosidase) and the ethanol conversion rate of the enzyme hydrolysate after fermentation by Saccharomyces cerevisiae at 40 C, pH of 4.5 for 48 h is 89%, which is markedly higher than the theoretical yield of 51% based on glucose as substrate (since all the glucose was consumed during fermentation, other sugar sources might be present in the hydrolysate). To conclude, it is proofed that the macroalgae Sargassum spp. is got the significant potential as a renewable feedstock for the production of bioethanol.