IIT Guwahati researchers develops faster, more efficient method to make sugar substitute xylitol

The Indian Institute of Technology-Guwahati (IIT-G) has found a faster, more efficient way to produce the sugar substitute xylitol, which could spell good news for diabetic people looking for safer, inexpensive substitutes for sugar.

According to the institute’s statement, a research team at the IIT-G said it had developed an ultrasound-assisted fermentation method to produce the safe sugar substitute, xylitol, from sugarcane bagasse (the residue left after crushing of sugar canes). Xylitol is a sugar alcohol derived from natural products and has potential anti-diabetic and anti-obesogenic effects, the research team said.

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The institute said on Tuesday that the new method developed by the researchers overcomes the operational limitations of chemical methods of synthesis and the time delays associated with conventional fermentation.

“With increasing awareness of the adverse effects of white sugar (sucrose), not only for patients with diabetes but also for general health, there has been a rise in the consumption of safe alternative sweeteners. Xylitol production from sugarcane bagasse using ultrasonic fermentation is a potential opportunity for forward integration of sugarcane industries in India,” the institute said in a statement.

The research, published in two peer-reviewed journals, Bioresource Technology and Ultrasonics Sonochemistry, was led by V S Moholkar, a professor with the department of chemical engineering in IIT-G, and included Dr Belachew Zegale Tizazu and Dr Kuldeep Roy who co-authored the paper.

“The use of ultrasound during the fermentation process not only reduced the time of fermentation to 15 hours (against the almost 48 hours in conventional processes), but also increased the yield of the product by almost 20 per cent. The researchers used only 1.5 hours of ultrasonication during the fermentation, which means that not much ultrasound power was consumed in the process,” Moholkar said.

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Xylitol is industrially produced by a chemical reaction in which wood-derived D-xylose—a costly chemical—is treated with a nickel catalyst at very high temperatures and pressures; this makes the process highly energy consuming. Even then, only 8-15 per cent of the xylose is converted to xylitol, and the current method requires extensive separation and purification steps—all of which translate to high price for the consumer, said the IIT-G.

Although the team’s findings are exciting, there is a challenge ahead to scale up the process, Moholkar said. “The present research has been carried out on laboratory scale. Commercial implementation of sonic fermentation requires the design of high-power sources of ultrasound for large-scale fermenters, which in turn requires large-scale transducers and RF amplifiers, and that remains a major technical challenge,” the professor said.