Modeling and specific growth rates estimation of a two-stage anaerobic digestion process for hydrogen and methane production

Abstract

Production of hydrogen from anaerobic digestion of waste, also known as dark fermentative hydrogen production, is one the numerous alternatives to obtain this precious source of energy. In most usual experimental setups anaerobic digestion is known to produce small quantities of H2. In a comprehensive study Pakarinen, Kaparaju and Rintala have compared two-stage H2 and CH4 production and one-stage CH4 production. Simeonov, Denchev, and Chorukova recently announced a simple model of such a two-stage anaerobic digestion process for the production of hydrogen and methane. In the present communication we propose such a complete model along with estimation schemes of the specific growth rates of the involved bacteria that avoids the tedious work of empirical modeling and identification of these specific growth rates. At this stage only simulations are provided to illustrate the performance of these proposed estimation schemes.