Kinetics of nano-catalysed dark fermentative hydrogen production from distillery wastewater

Kinetics of nano-catalysed dark fermentative biohydrogen production from molasses-based distillery wastewater has been reported. Iron oxide nanoparticle was supplemented (10-200 mgL(-1)) to the wastewater to enhance the biohydrogen production. Andrew's inhibition model was employed to evaluate the rate of hydrogen production (R-H2) and hydrogen yield at different concentration of iron oxide nanoparticles. The maximum R-H2 and specific hydrogen yield (SHY) for the fermentative hydrogen production system at different concentration of iron oxide nanoparticle were found to be 80.7ml/hr and 44.28ml H-2/g COD. Michaelis-Menton equation was applied to determine the rate of hydrogen production (R-H2) and yield of H-2 (SHY) at different initial pH (5, 6 & 7). Andrew's inhibition model has been used to describe the inhibitory effect of substrate concentration on the rate of H-2 production (R-H2). R-H2 decreased with the increase in substrate concentration but SHY first decreased with substrate concentration and it is maximum at higher substrate concentration of 110 gL(-1). Monod model has been used to determine the growth kinetic parameters. The values of maximum rates of microbial growth (mu(m)) and substrate utilization (R-su) were 0.1 g biomass/g biomass/day and 14.03 g COD/g biomass/day respectively at different iron oxide nanoparticles concentration. (C) 2014 Sandeep. N. Mudliar. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).