Batch biohydrogen production from dilute acid hydrolyzates of fruits-and-vegetables wastes and corn stover as co-substrates

Abstract

Fruits-and-vegetables wastes (FVW) and corn stover (CS) are two of the most recurred lignocellulosic biomasses used for biofuel production. In this work, the co-processing of FVW and CS for biohydrogen production was proposed and evaluated through a set of experimental designs. First, a 52 general factorial was applied on the dilute acid pretreatment at five levels of FVW:CS ratios (0:1, 1:3, 1:1, 3:1 and 1:0 dry mass basis) and two levels of the type of catalyst (HCl or H2SO4 at 0.5% in volumetric basis). Then, biohydrogen production using the dilute acid hydrolyzates was carried out in batch mode at 35 ºC in a 3 2 factorial design, the factors being the inoculum to substrate ratio (0.8, 1.0, and 1.2 g g-1) and the initial concentration of reducing sugars (10, 13 and 16 g L-1). The effects of the type of acid catalyst and the FVW:CS ratio were significant in terms of sugars production and yield. The best catalyst was HCl for the 3:1 FVW:CS ratio, which produced monomeric sugars concentrations of 10.0, 3.7 and 2.9 g L-1 for glucose, xylose and arabinose, respectively. The acid hydrolyzates proved to be suitable for biohydrogen production, reaching yields of 2.31 mol H2 mol-1glucose and hydrogen production rates of 8.83 mL H2 h-1. An economic prospection at lab scale demonstrated that production of hydrogen presented net revenues of 0.009 USD per kg of co-substrates (wet basis), resulting in 24 % profitability of hydrogen production over its production costs. Therefore, this co-processing is an interesting proposal with further applications on biorefinery models.

Environmental impact assessment of biohydrogen production from orange peel waste by lab-scale dark and photofermentation processes

“…Additionally, its combustion does not contribute to GHG emissions or acid rain (Ghimire et al 2015). Over the past decades, the biological processes involved in biohydrogen production have been extensively studied (Argun et al 2017, Mishra et al 2019, Rodríguez-Valderrama et al 2020a. Existing biological techniques for producing biohydrogen include dark fermentation (DF) and photofermentation (PF) using carbohydrate-rich substrates as raw materials.…”

Hydrogen from Dark Fermentation of the Organic Fraction of Waste Diapers: Optimization Based on Response Surface Experiments

“…It is worth highlighting why waste diapers (WD) are attractive for biohydrogen production. Among the merits and benefits of this use of WD we can cite the following: (i) the WD have a high content of cellulose (40% db); earlier research has demonstrated that substrates and wastes rich in cellulose and hemicellulose or carbohydrates can produce an attractive amount of biological hydrogen (Rodríguez-Valderrama et al, 2020;Alvarez et al, 2020;Sarangi and Nanda, 2020;Solowski et al, 2020;Weide et al, 2019;Catalán and Sánchez, 2019;Yeshanew et al, 2018;Roy 2017;Robledo-Narváez et al, 2013). Thus, in principle, the potential of biohydrogen production of WD, could be very high.…”

“…If successful, DF of the OFWD would hold promise for integration to biorefineries from wastes that could co-ferment this waste with a variety of agricultural and agroindustrial wastes of similar characteristics (cellulosic and lignocellulosic wastes, i.e., food and textile wastes) (Rodríguez-Valderrama et al, 2020;Sarangi and Nanda, 2020;Solowski et al, 2020;Weide et al, 2019;Catalán and Sánchez, 2019;Yeshanew et al, 2018;Roy 2017;Robledo-Narváez et al, 2013). As it was hinted above, biological hydrogen production can be easily incorporated to several biorefinery platforms as a first stage of biofuel generation, followed by a network of processes devoted to obtaining value-added products and possibly more energy (Poggi-Varaldo et al, 2014).…”