Sunday, May 4, 2008
1-09

Biohydrogen and biodiesel co-production with treatment of high solid food waste

Zhanyou Chi, Yubin Zheng, and Shulin Chen. Biological System Engineering, Washington State University, L.J. Smith 213, Pullman, WA 99163

A two-step process to produce hydrogen and biodiesel with treatment of high solid food waste is developed. The first step of this process is dark fermentative hydrogen production, in which the fermentative bacteria will use glucose derived from the organic waste carbon to produce hydrogen and volatile fatty acids (VFA) (e.g., acetate or butyrate). One third of the carbon is converted to carbon dioxide in this process while two thirds of the carbon is converted to volatile fatty acids. In the second step, the remaining carbon in the form of VFA is used as a carbon feed to yeast with high lipid content in the biomass, which in turn can be used as feedstock for the biodiesel industry. On the whole,  not only the waste is treated in this process, but also it is used as a resource and converted to biomass and biofuel.

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