Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Waste to Renewable Energy: A Sustainable
and Green Approach Towards Production
of Biohydrogen by Acidogenic Fermentation
S. Venkata Mohan
Abstract The global impact of increasing energy demands, depleting reserves of
fossil fuels and increasing pollution loads on the environment due to the utilization
of energy produced from fossil fuels have received considerable notice in recent
years. Generation of energy from fossil fuels is generally convenient but the deplet-
ing reserves and associated global warming are major problems. One potential
alternative is a shift from fossil fuel to a hydrogen (H 2 ) based economy. H 2 is con-
sidered to be a clean energy carrier with high-energy yield (142.35 kJ/g) and upon
combustion it produces only water. H 2 can be produced by the biological routes
of bio-photolysis, photo-fermentation and dark fermentation or by a combination
of these processes. Dark fermentation offers the particular advantage of using
wastewater as a substrate and mixed culture as catalyst. Wastewater contains high
levels of biodegradable organic material with net positive energy. One way to reduce
the cost of treatment is to generate bio-energy, such as H 2 gas by metabolically
utilizing organic matter, at the same time accomplishing treatment. This chapter
mainly focuses on the evaluation of fermentative H 2 -generating processes utilizing
wastewater as substrate and mixed culture as biocatalyst. A particular insight was
also laid on to discuss the process based on important operating factors involved
and to delineate some of the limitations. Various strategies such as multiple process
integration, microbial electrolysis, polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) production,
bioaugmentation, self-immobilization and metabolic engineering were discussed in
overcoming some of the limitations in the direction of process enhancement.
Keywords Biohydrogen
·
Anaerobic
·
Dark fermentation
·
Wastewater treatment
·
Acidogenic
·
Pretreatment
·
Bioelectricity
·
Microbial fuel cell (MFC)
·
Microbial
electrolysis
·
Bioaugmentation
·
Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA)
·
Mixed culture
·
Immobilization
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