Laboratoire de Microbiologie et des Technologies Alimentaires (LA.MI.T.A), Département de Biologie Végétale de la Faculté des Sciences et Techniques (FAST), Université d'Abomey-Calavi (UAC), 04BP 1107 Cotonou, Bénin
Palm wine, known as atan in Benin, is a sweet beverage extracted from the oil palm (Elaeis guineens). Highly prized by the population for its high nutritional value, its marketing is very limited due to a lack of or inappropriate means of preservation. In the search for palliatives, the present study aims at the Bio-preservation of palm wine by using orange peels to extend its shelf life. To achieve this objective, the preservative effect of orange peels was evaluated, and the stabilized wine was characterized in physicochemical, nutritional, microbiological and organoleptic terms. Palm wine samples graded A, B and C received 10g, 15g and 20g of orange peel respectively. During the storage period, the bottles that received the peelings in this order burst after one, two, three and four weeks respectively. The flasks that burst early were those with a low peel incorporation rate. The 33cL bottles containing palm wine and 25g orange peel resisted bursting up to 4 weeks of storage. Analysis of physicochemical and nutritional parameters showed that stabilized palm wine was richer in potassium, magnesium, sodium and calcium than the unstabilized control wine. Microbiological analysis of the stabilized palm wine showed that the yeast, Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus loads were lower than in the unstabilized wine. In terms of sensory quality, the study showed that consumers rated the consistency, color and taste of stabilized wines higher than those of unstabilized (control) wines.
Increasing the price petroleum in recent years submits increasingly the importing countries with major difficulties, especially those underdeveloped such as Benin. The main cause of global warming is the abusive exploitation of non-renewable natural resources mainly oil. Benin is one of the cassava producing countries that can be used for production of ethanol. The latter is a renewable source of energy that can enable Benin to circumvent this escalation of fossiliferous fuels. Spite of this availability, Benin has not, up today's date, its own techniques for the production of ethyl alcohol meeting the standards. Very little data exists on the design for techniques that may lead to the production of standardized alcohol. This is why this study set itself the objective the design of necessary technical and semi-industrial production of bioethanol. The results of our works have helped to optimize the hydrolysis process of cassava with enzyme preparation based germinated sorghum. With 20-25% of the this enzyme preparation, optimum time of 4 hours of hydrolysis, under the experimental conditions the fermentation lasts 30 hours with 2 g of instant yeast into 100 ml of medium. The double-distilled of the fermented mash in the device designed and manufactured has given the ethanol at 94