Biological hydrogen production from biomass at room temperature

摘要

Hydrogen is an environmentally friendly source of renewable energy and it has a high energy yield greater than hydrocarbon fuels. In this work, we present the production of hydrogen gas by dark fermentation, a biological process. The substrate was cassava starch. The sources of hydrogen producing bacteria, Clostridium, were swine manure and buffalo dung. The inoculum sludge was pre-heated treatment at 100 °C for 2 hours. The fermented hydrogen gas can be produced at room temperature. The cassava starch concentration was 100 g/l. The maximum hydrogen yield of 80 ml hydrogen gas per gram of starch was achieved. The highest purity of hydrogen was 37% when fermented volume was 120 ml at 144 hours. Besides hydrogen gas, the product contained several undesired-impurity gases including methane, carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulphides, and water vapour.