Prolonged cultivation of an anaerobic bacterial community producing hydrogen

Abstract

This paper studies various methods of long-term maintenance of the process of hydrogen evolution during the growth of an aerobic bacterial community on a starch-containing environment. When cultured in separable trip fermentation mode for 72 days, from 0.10 to 0.23 H2/l of medium/day was formed. The regime of regular reseeding lasted more than 100 days, forming an average of 0.81 1 H2/l of medium/day. The advantages and disadvantages of different methods of microbial hydrogen production during a dark starch fermentation process are presented. From the obtained H2 forming microbial communities, we isolated an anaerobic spore-forming bacterium (strain BF). Phylogenetic analysis of the 16S RNA gene sequence of the new strain showed that according to its genotype it belongs to the Clostridium butyricum species.