African Journal of Biotechnology Vol. 3 (8), pp. 395-398, August, 2004                     ISSN 1684–5315 © 2004 Academic Journals

Full Length Research Paper

Studies on the degradation of wood sawdust by Lentinus squarrosulus (Mont.) Singer

Shide EG¹, Wuyep PA²* and Nok AJ³

¹Department of Chemical Engineering, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria.

²Department of Biological Science, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria.

³Department of Biochemistry, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria.

*Corresponding author. E-mail: egshide@Yahoo.com.

Accepted 30 July, 2004.

Lentinus squarrosulus (Mont.) Singer, a basidiomycete also known as a white rot fungi, was immobilized on sodium alginate and tested for the effectiveness to degrade wood sawdust (WSD). Untreated and 0.1 M HCl-pretreated WSD samples were separately reacted in a micro-carrier bioreactor (mCBR) and the extent of degradation to form protein, glucose and ethanol was investigated.  Pretreatment enhanced the production of both proteins and ethanol by average value of 72.0% over untreated WSD samples, after hydraulic retention time of 72 h. The maximum production of protein observed was 0.94 mg/ml-reaction volume and that of ethanol was 6.6 mg/ml-reaction volume, whereas glucose concentration fluctuated due to interconversion to ethanol. This report shows that L. squarrosulus (Mont.) Singer have the potentials of degrading WSD samples to important chemical compounds that are not hazardous to the environment.

Key words: Lentinus squarrosulus, wood sawdust, sodium alginate, bioreactor, ethanol.