Biological waste-to-green energy conversion using a novel biohydrogen process

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This proposal focuses on optimization and further development of a novel patent-pending biological waste-to-green energy system comprising a two-stage process. In the first-stage the waste is converted via fermentation to hydrogen in a completely-mixed tank reactor followed by a gravity separator to decouple the hydraulic retention time from the biomass retention time to overcome the problem of biomass washout. The second stage involves conversion of the waste to methane gas by anaerobic digestion. The process was demonstrated with synthetic glucose-based wastewater to roughly double the hydrogen yield, significantly improve anaerobic digestion leading to high overall solids destruction efficiencies that translate to lower sludge processing and disposal fees. This project focuses on further improvement of the process to handle particulate and solid wastes, improvements of hydrogen yield by electrical induction, and assessment of the biogas quality with respect to trace contaminants that impact utilization both as electric power and natural gas.