H₂ production by photofermentation in an innovative plate‐type photobioreactor with meandering channels

Abstract

Hydrogen production by Rhodobacter capsulatus is an anaerobic, photobiological process requiring specific mixing conditions. In this study, an innovative design of a photobioreactor is proposed. The design is based on a plate‐type photobioreactor with an interconnected meandering channel to allow culture mixing and H2 degassing. The culture flow was characterized as a quasi‐plug‐flow with radial mixing caused by a turbulent‐like regime achieved at a low Reynolds number. The dissipated volumetric power was decreased 10‐fold while maintaining PBR performances (production and yields) when compared with a magnetically stirred tank reactor. To increase hydrogen production flow rate, several bacterial concentrations were tested by increasing the glutamate concentration using fed‐batch cultures. The maximum hydrogen production flow rate (157.7 ± 9.3 ml H2/L/h) achieved is one of the highest values so far reported for H2 production by R. capsulatus. These first results are encouraging for future scale‐up of the plate‐type reactor.

An Ultra-High Temperature Stable Solar Absorber Using the ZrC-Based Cermets

“…Over the past decades, to alleviate the increasingly severe fossil energy crisis, the capture and utilization of abundant solar energy have evolved into a hot research topic (Wu et al, 2021;Jiasheng 1996;Weinstein, Loomis, and Chen 2015). The photothermal conversion is a potential way to efficiently utilize the solar energy among various solar energy utilization methods including photoelectric (Chirumamilla et al, 2021;Wei et al, 2020;Wang S. et al, 2021), photothermal conversion (Hoch et al, 2016;Azad et al, 2016) and photobiological conversion (Rosenbaum et al, 2005;Turon et al, 2021). Compared with commercialized photovoltaic technologies, concentrated solar power (CSP) systems can overcome the problem of intermittent sunlight, but the high cost still hinders the large deployment (Yushchenko et al, 2018).…”