Sequential generation of hydrogen and methane from glutamic acid through combined photo-fermentation and methanogenesis.

Ao Xia, Jun Cheng, Richen Lin, Jianzhong Liu, Junhu Zhou, Kefa Cen

State Key Laboratory of Clean Energy Utilization, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China.

Bioresource technology 2013 Mar

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Glutamic acid can hardly produce hydrogen via dark- or photo-fermentation without pretreatment. In this study, a novel process of acidogenic pretreatment with bacteria and zeolite treatment for NH4(+) removal was proposed to use glutamic acid as feedstock in photo-fermentation for efficient hydrogen production. Glutamic acid pretreated with acidogenic bacteria produces soluble metabolite products. After zeolite treatment, the acidulated solution, which mainly contains acetate, butyrate, and NH4(+), shows a decrease in NH4(+) concentration from 36.7mM to 3.2mM (NH4(+) removal efficiency of 91.1%). After NH4(+) removal, the treated solution is incubated with photosynthetic bacteria, exhibiting a maximum hydrogen yield of 292.9mL/g(-glutamic acid) during photo-fermentation. The residual solution from photo-fermentation is reused by methanogenic bacteria to produce a maximum methane yield of 102.7mL/g. The heating value conversion efficiency from glutamic acid to gas fuel significantly increases from 18.9% during photo-fermentation to 40.9% in the combined photo-fermentation and methanogenesis process. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Citation

Ao Xia, Jun Cheng, Richen Lin, Jianzhong Liu, Junhu Zhou, Kefa Cen. Sequential generation of hydrogen and methane from glutamic acid through combined photo-fermentation and methanogenesis. Bioresource technology. 2013 Mar;131:146-51