Among the main sub-products of the dairy industry is the cheese whey, obtained after milk's casein precipitation. With the advancement of technology, the production of cheese passed from a traditional process to a manufacturing process where everyday thousands of liters of whey are produced. The fermentation of cheese whey with the purpose of producing ethanol can present itself as a technically feasible alternative, as well as besides reducing the pollution potential of this residue it can still generate a product with higher added value. Thus, the aim of this paper was to obtain ethanol, using the cheese whey "sort of curd cheese", deproteinized, as a substrate for the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and the addition of sucrose. A statistical design was used and different inoculum concentrations and percentages of sucrose were studied. The best result was obtained by adding 100 g L-1 of sucrose and 6.0 g L-1 of inoculum into the whey getting a % conversion of substrate to ethanol of 76.14%.
cheese whey; alcoholic fermentation; ethanol
