Pretreatments testing of high biodiversity inocula with simultaneous biohydrogen production and wastewater treatment

Abstract

Hydrogen represents a renewable energy resource and it is an ideal alternative to fossil fuels since it does not contribute to the greenhouse effect. In the present study it has been proposed to develop an experimental model to test and compare fermentative capacity of waste water with biohydrogen production for two high biodiversity heterotrophic microbial inocula. All the pretreatment methods tested yielded good results, but heat and acid pretreatment had the best results. These observations open the way for the development and application of new technologies using microbial consortia specially developed to serve the dual role of biological waste water treatment and the production of a renewable energy in the form of biohydrogen.