For this enzymatic hydrolysis of cellulose, the membrane reactor is the central feature, thus the following mass balance will only considering mass transfer occurs in the membrane reactor. Based on P.Andric et al. (2010) usage of stirred tank is only to provide an auxiliary mixing unit, give additional volume for the hydrolysis reaction and possibility to discharge the unconverted material.

For mass flow of the process, P. Andric et al. (2010) states that once the equilibrium is achieved, the flow of substrate slurry into the membrane reactor is equal to the flow of aqueous solution of the reaction products removed from the membrane reactor (permeate). The flow of buffer solution into the reactor will not directly affect the mass transfer in the reactor as it only added when the pH value of substrate slurry changes. Even the flow of recycled slurry also do not involve since the flow is only open after the separation in the membrane reactor passed the retention time specified earlier before the process started. P. Andric et al. also mentioned that concentration of products (glucose) in the reactor is equal to concentration of products in permeate.

 

          In term of conversion of cellulose into glucose, there are lots of researches done to identify it by using different methods and reactor set up (but still using membrane reactor as the main feature). By referring to the latest report by Gan et al. (as cited in P. Andric et al., 2010) extent of conversion of cellulose to glucose are up to 51% and 53% for semi continuous and continuous mode respectively.

Since our source of cellulose is from waste generated by TESCO, taking only the fruit and vegetable wastes (FVW) which generated 300 kg/ per day and use the information reported by H. Bouallagui et al. (2005) that suggested that the content of cellulose in FVW is 9%. Thus the amount of cellulose in FVW generated by TESCO can be approximately calculated as below: