Nan Qi, Jian Wang, Chunlu Yang

                                                                                   School of Environment, Liaoning University

                                                                                                  Xin Zhao, Xiaomin Hu

                                                                School of Resources and Civil Engineering, Northeastern University

Abstract

The microbial immobilization and suitable hydraulic retention time (HRT) are conducive to maintain the biomass for further prompting the hydrogen production efficiency. In this study, peanut shell was employed as carriers to investigate the hydrogen production enhancement and the promotion mechanism at different HRTs with plastic pellet carrier as control. Both of the over-acid phenomenon and the operational stability decreasing occurred when HRT was shorter or longer than 6 h (HRT = 2 h, 4 h, or 8 h) in this study. When peanut shell was used as carrier, the maximum H2 yield of 1.7 L and H2 production rate of 0.58 L/L/d were obtained at HRT of 6 h, which were nearly 20 % and 15 % higher than that of plastic pellet as carriers, respectively. The hydrogen production system with peanut shell as carriers had better hydrogen production capacity and immobilized effect, since peanut shell provided a supplementary substrate for the growth and metabolism of hydrogen producing bacteria, and buffered the acidity of the system. This study provided an application for immobilization technology and the industrialization of bio-hydrogen production.

Read the article here:     57-Enhancing biohydrogen production by peanut shell carrier assisted fermentation at different hydraulic retention time.pdf