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ABSTRACTXylitol is five-carbon polyol sugar which widely used as a sweetener in food and pharmaceutical.
Xylitol production by chemical procedures using high pressure and temperature also needed
extensive purification are less cost-effective in production. Fermentation which has more advantages
with lower cost due tocheaper substrate and the non-necessity of xylose purification. The purposes of
this research were to find optimum condition for xylitol production with particular variable such as
substrate concentration, aeration, methanol and nitrogen sources addition. Oil palm empty fruit
bunch hydrolyzates containing xylose was fermented into xylitol by Debaryomyces hansenii UICC Y-
276 at room temperature. Fermentation was carried out at 200 rpm for 72 hours. Then, xylose and
xylitol were determined by HPLC with RI detector and LiChrosorb® NH2 (4 mm x 125,00 mm, 5μm)
column. Acetonitrile-water was used as a solvent, 20 mL sample volume was injected at flow rate of
1,0 mL/min at room temperature. The optimum fermentation conditions was obtained in a state of
semi-anaerobic condition (1 : 2.5) with 10,0 % (w/v) xylose concentration. Meanwhile with the
addition of various concentration of methanol and nitrogen sources, it was obtained that 1,5 %
methanol and 0,5 % ammonium sulfate gave high yield of xylitol production. The best result for yield
xylitol production was 31,83 %."
