Improvement in energy recovery from Chlorella sp. biomass by integrated dark-photo biohydrogen production and dark fermentation-anaerobic digestion processes

Abstract

Chlorella sp. biomass was used as the sole substrate for the production of hydrogen and methane through integrated dark fermentation (DF) and photo-fermentation (PF), and DF and anaerobic digestion (AD) processes. Prior to use in fermentations, the biomass was pretreated by acid-hydrothermal method, which yielded a maximum reducing sugar yield of 162.9 ± 4.2 mg g-biomass−1. The use of the microalgal hydrolysate to produce hydrogen by DF gave a hydrogen yield (HY) of 47.2 ± 1.1 mL g-volatile-solids−1 (VS). The subsequent use of the hydrogenic effluent in PF gave a HY of 125.0 ± 1.5 mL g-VS−1, while AD of the hydrogenic effluent gave a methane yield of 152.8 ± 1.3 mL g-VS−1. The total energy yield attained by the use of DF alone, the integrated DF-PF, and DF-AD processes were 0.51, 1.86 and 5.98 kJ g-VS−1, respectively. These results indicate that the integrated DF-AD process was effective in recovering energy from Chlorella sp. biomass. However, an energy balance analysis indicated that the process was not energetically feasible due to the high energy demand for the acid-hydrothermal pretreatment.