On-Site Sugar Analysis and Pre-treatment of Nipa Saps

摘要

Fresh nipa sap is rich in sucrose and its physicochemical properties changes rapidly after collection and during storage. The current study was initiated to establish an on-site sugar analysis for determining chemical composition of fresh nipa saps and pre-treatment method to store nipa saps for subsequent bioethanol production. Therefore, brix measurement and subsequent heat-treatment on-site was considered in this study. For the on-site determination of the sugar content in the saps, a linear correlation was developed between brix and laboratory measurements, resulting in the total brix (wt%) value measured by handy refrac-tometer, equivalent to 0.96 of the total sugars (wt%) determined by HPLC. Furthermore, to maintain most nipa sap sugar yield, heat-treatment at 100°C for 10 min with refiuxing was found to be most acceptable as a pre-treatment of the fresh nipa saps.