Produção de hidrogênio a partir do bagaço de cana-de-açúcar por via fermentativa anaeróbia

Abstract

Brazil produces approximately 350 million tons of lignocellulosic residues per year, among them is sugarcane bagasse, which can be used in the production of hydrogen. Hydrogen has been studied as an alternative to replace fossil fuels. Once it is a renewable fuel, it has high concentration of energy per unit mass and does not generate gases that cause the greenhouse effect. Among the hydrocarbon production processes, anaerobic fermentation stands out, as it has a low cost when compared to other processes. In this sense, this work had as data source the work in the production of H2 fermentation from sugarcane bagasse. The work involves two phases. In Phase 1, bagasse preparation and characterization activities were created, and pre-attempts were made for both bagasse and inoculum. As happened in 2 were the modalities of the batch system, as well as its monitoring and analysis, which was divided into two stages, a stage1 of the phenomena: substrate mass (0.5, 1.0, and 1.5 (0, 30 and 60 min) and initial pH (5, 6, and 7) were evaluated in the pre-hydrolysis phase (10, 20 and 30%), . The results were the ones that had the best results for this project, the best factors were: substrate mass of 0.5 g, 10% of inoculum, initial pH of 6 and heating time in the 30 min prehydrolysis, represented by the reactor R567 with a hydrogen search of 2.59 mmolH2 / gSSVday. The main metabolites generated in the reactors were acetic acid (478 - 1374.2 mg / L), predominant in all reactors, propionic acid (56.92 - 59.45 mg / L), ethanol (26,46 - 79, 13 mg / L) and methanol (33.71 - 79.88 mg / L). For the coefficient of variation of the variables, in all reactors the level of influence between the factors for H2 production was strong to perfect, that is, one of the factors has a strong / perfect influence on H2 production.