Simultaneous biohydrogen production and purification in a double-membrane bioreactor system

Abstract

In this work the establishment of a double-membrane bioreactor was aimed. Initially, a continuous hydrogen fermenter was coupled with a commercial Kubota ® microfiltration membrane module and the production performance of the cell-retentive design was evaluated under various hydraulic retention times. As a result, it has been observed that altering HRT influenced the rejection feature of the microfiltration module while had an inverse effect on hydrogen productivity and yield, since shortened HRTs were accompanied by gradually decreasing H 2 yields (HY) and progressively increasing volumetric H 2 production rates (HPR). The highest HY and HPR were achieved as 1.13 mol H 2 /mol glucose and 0.24 mol H 2 /L-d, respectively. Furthermore, a Permselect ® (PDMS) gas separation membrane was installed to the anaerobic membrane bioreactor and its ability to separate hydrogen from the raw fermentation gaseous mixture was assessed. The highest purity hydrogen obtained in onestep purification by the PDMS module was 67.3 vol.%, which exceeds 30% enrichment efficiency considering 51.3 vol% H 2 in the feed gas. Hence, it could be concluded that the poly(dimethyl siloxane) membrane has potential to attractively concentrate biohydrogen from fermenter off-gas and may be used for in-situ product recovery.

Hydrogen production from glycerol by Escherichia coli and other bacteria: An overview and perspectives

“…For separating H 2 gas from gaseous mixture of CO 2 /H 2 (see Fig. 3 and Section 3) in batch cultures different membranes (inorganic, organic and mixed-matrix, non-porous and porous) have been applied [110,111]. Particularly, amorphous or crystal metallic membranes mainly based on palladium are extremely selective to H 2 but they have disadvantages (fragility, hard operation, high cost) so they are less useful [112,113].…”

Comparison of Anaerobic Degradation Processes for Bioenergy Generation from Liquid Fraction of Pressed Solid Waste

“…Biogas and biohydrogen fermentations involve the microbiologically-assisted degradation of organic compounds and result in flammable gaseous energy carriers, which should be collected and purified [11][12][13][14][15]. In our earlier projects biogas [16,17] as well as biohydrogen [18][19][20][21][22] production from various substrates have been investigated.…”

Biotechnological and bioinformatics approaches for augmentation of biohydrogen production: A review

“…Membrane technology is an astounding option to accomplish this purpose. Many types of membranes and some with special potential for biohydrogen purification such as the non-porous, polymeric and ionic liquid based membranes are available [31,[34][35][36][37]. One of the important features of these membranes are that they can be employed nearly under the conditions where biohydrogen formation taking place.…”