Produção de hidrogênio a partir de efluentes de laticínios

Abstract

Hydrogen has been considered by many researchers an interesting alternative for energy production, mainly because it has a high efficiency energy and not generate greenhouse gases during their conversion. Among the forms of hydrogen production, there is the fermentation that has the advantage of using organic compounds, like the dairy wastewater, as substrate. This study evaluated the influence of organic loading rate (OLR) in biohydrogen production from dairy wastewater. This production was in an anaerobic fluidized bed reactor inoculated by natural fermentation and using ground tire as support material. The hydrogen yield decreases with increasing OLR, from 2.56 ± 0.62 molH2/mol carbohydrate to 0.81 ± 0.23 molH2/mol carbohydrate when the TCO varied between 28.65 kg/m3/d and 126.07 kg/m3/d. The higher values for the hydrogen content and hydrogen production, equal to 35.72 ± 9.43 % and 0.80 ± 0.21 LH2/h/L, respectively, were found in phase presented at the second lowest ORL. The main metabolites produced were acetic acid (67.15% -87.42%) and ethanol (6.01% -13.09%)