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

该提案的重点是优化和进一步开发一种新的正在申请专利的生物废物-绿色能源系统，该系统包括两个阶段的过程。 在第一阶段中，废物在完全混合的罐式反应器中通过发酵转化为氢气，然后通过重力分离器将水力停留时间与生物质停留时间分离，以克服生物质冲洗的问题。 第二阶段涉及通过厌氧消化将废物转化为甲烷气体。 用合成葡萄糖基废水证明了该工艺可使氢气产量增加约一倍，显著改善厌氧消化，从而提高整体固体破坏效率，从而降低污泥处理和处置费用。 该项目的重点是进一步改进处理颗粒和固体废物的工艺，通过电感应提高氢气产量，以及评估影响电力和天然气利用的痕量污染物方面的沼气质量。

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.