Coupling dark fermentation and microbial electrolysis to enhance bio-hydrogen production from agro-industrial wastewaters and by-products in a bio-refinery framework

Antonella Marone (1) , Olga R. Ayala-Campos (2) , Eric Trably (1) , Alessandro Carmona Martinez (1, 3) , Roman Moscoviz (1) , Eric Latrille (1) , Jean-Philippe Steyer (1) , Víctor Alcaraz-Gonzalez (2) , Nicolas Bernet (1)

1 LBE - Laboratoire de Biotechnologie de l'Environnement [Narbonne]
2 CUCEI, Departamento de Ingenieria Quimica
3 IMDEA Water Institute

The aim of this work is to evaluate biohydrogen production from agro-industrial wastewaters and by-products, by combining dark fermentation and microbial electrolysis in a two-step cascade process. Such coupling of both technologies constitutes a technological building block within a concept of environmental biorefinery where sustainable production of renewable energy is expected. Six different wastewaters and industrial by-products coming from cheese, fruit juice, paper, sugar, fruit processing and spirits factories were evaluated for the feasibility of hydrogen production in a two-step process. The overall hydrogen production when coupling dark fermentation and microbial electrolysis was increased up to 13 times when compared to fermentation alone, achieving a maximum overall hydrogen yield of 1608.6 ± 266.2 mLH2/gCODconsumed and a maximum of 78.5 ± 5.7% of COD removal. These results show that dark fermentation coupled with microbial electrolysis is a highly promising option to maximize the conversion of agro-industrial wastewaters and by-products into bio-hydrogen.

Mots clés: biohydrogen; dark fermentation (DF); microbial electrolysis cell (MEC); agro-industrial wastewaters and by-products; two-stage process; production of hydrogen

Mots clés: biohydrogène; bioraffinerie environnementale; fermentation sombre; production d'hydrogène; cellule d'électrolyse microbienne; effluent agroindustriel; déchet agroindustriel; sous-produit

Domaines: Sciences du Vivant [q-bio]

Antonella Marone, Olga R. Ayala-Campos, Eric Trably, Alessandro Carmona Martinez, Roman Moscoviz, et al.. Coupling dark fermentation and microbial electrolysis to enhance bio-hydrogen production from agro-industrial wastewaters and by-products in a bio-refinery framework. International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, 2017, 42 (3), pp.1609-1621. ⟨10.1016/j.ijhydene.2016.09.166⟩. ⟨hal-01605057⟩