Effects of nutrients on biohydrogen production in attached growth systems

Abstract

Since the beginning of human history, the alternatives renewable energy to fossil fuel is hydrogen. The fossil fuel will be exhausted sooner or later. Hydrogen is the most suitable element to substitute the fossil fuel because it is odorless, tasteless, colorless and non-poisonous gas. Hydrogen will produce water and it will generate no pollutants when it is used as a fuel. Biological method is less energy intensive among various hydrogen production processes and the method used was dark fermentation. The main purpose for this study is to identify the specific nutrients that influence the production of biohydrogen production in attached growth system. The other purposes are to evaluate the different concentration of nutrients in attached growth system that affecting biohydrogen production and to optimize the nutrient composition for biohydrogen production. The biological method used in this study is dark fermentation with palm oil mill effluent (POME), activated granular carbon (GAC) and feedstock placed in water bath at 60 °C. The nutrients used are ammonium chloride and monopotassium phosphate with different concentration. The laboratory was conducted with two experiments with the control that no granular activated carbon and the different concentration of the nutrients. Therefore, the specific nutrient that influenced the biohydrogen production is ammonium chloride due to the steadily of volume of gas and H2S content. The best concentration for ammonium chloride was 0.25g/L because it can produce more hydrogen compared to the other concentration since it produced higher volume gas and H2S content while the best concentration for monopotassium phosphate was 0.5g/L due to stable decrease for volume of gas.