Deoiled algal cake as feedstock for dark fermentative biohydrogen production: An integrated biorefinery approach

An integrated biorefinery approach utilizing deoiled algal cake (after lipid extraction) as potential feed-stock for biohydrogen (H-2) production using selectively enriched acidogenic consortia as biocatalyst was evaluated. Algae pretreated extract (AP-E) documented maximum H-2 production rate (HPR), cumulative H-2 production (CHP) and specific H-2 yield (SHY) with higher substrate degradation (65%) in terms of COD removal efficiency than other conditions, which is a good sign for waste remediation. Along with the biohydrogen production and substrate removal the consortia also produced good amount of volatile fatty acids (VFA). VFA production in fermentation media resulted in reactor pH drop. The study depicted the feasible use of deoiled algal biomass as feed-stock for H-2 production in the framework of biorefinery. Copyright (C) 2014, Hydrogen Energy Publications, LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.