Biological hydrogen production from an unsaturated, packed-bed bioreactor

The design and testing of a trickling filter for biological hydrogen production was presented. The calculated hydrogen yields from measured gas phase hydrogen concentration and consumed glucose indicated an overall conversion efficiency of 17-22% based on a theoretical stoichiometry of 4 mole hydrogen from 1 mole of glucose. Although influent glucose varied from 3.3 to 10 g/L, high hydrogen concentrations of 74-79% were consistently obtained. The discrepancy between the measured and predicted hydrogen yield values indicated production of more reduced solvent products such as butanol. The relatively low hydrogen yields were also possibly due to loss of biogas through the collection bag. The high hydrogen concentration obtained demonstrated the feasibility of this novel unsaturated trickle-bed reactor for biological hydrogen production. The design parameters and performance data obtained would be useful to the scale-up of this trickling filter reactor for wastewater treatment and biological hydrogen production. This is an abstract of a paper presented at the 228th ACS National Meeting (Philadelphia, PA 8/22-26/2004).