Comparison of Acetate-butyrate and Acetate-ethanol Metabolic Pathway in Biohydrogen Production.

Background: Hydrogen gas is the cleanest energy carrier and could be produced by biological process. Dark fermentation is one of the biohydrogen production methods that carried out just on organic wastes conversion.

Methods: In this study, the batch tests were conducted to compare the biohydrogen production and glucose fermentation via acetate-butyrate and acetate-ethanol metabolic pathway induced by NaOH and KOH (10 M) pretreatment. In batch test, the glucose concentration in the feed was varied from 3.75 to 15 g/L under mesophilic conditions (37°C ± 1°C). In order to sludge pretreatment, NaOH and KOH (as an alkaline agent) was used.

Results: Batch tests showed that maximum biohydrogen production under NaOH (2.7 ± 0.5 L) and KOH (2.2 ± 0.7 L) pretreatment was achieved at 15 g/L of influent glucose. In the batch test, with increasing influent glucose concentration, the lower yields of hydrogen were observed. The biohydrogen reactions had good electron closure (5.2%-13.5%) for various glucose concentrations and pretreatments. For NaOH and KOH pretreatment, the biohydrogen yield decreased from 2.49 to 1.63 and from 2.22 to 1.2 mol H/mol glucose, respectively, when glucose concentration increased from 3.75 to 15 g/L.

Conclusions: By applying alkaline sludge pretreatment by NaOH and KOH, the glucose fermentation was followed with acetate-butyrate and acetate-ethanol metabolic pathway, respectively. The lower biohydrogen yields were observed under acetate-ethanol metabolic pathway and related to metabolically unfavorable for biohydrogen production.