White-rot fungal pretreatment of wheat straw with Phanerochaete chrysosporium for biohydrogen production: simultaneous saccharification and fermentation

This paper demonstrates biohydrogen production was enhanced by white-rot fungal pretreatment of wheat straw (WS) through simultaneous saccharification and fermentation (SSF). Wheat straw was pretreated by Phanerochaete chrysosporium at 30 °C under solid state fermentation for 12 days, and lignin was removed about 28.5 ± 1.3 %. Microscopic structure observation combined thermal gravity and differential thermal gravity analysis further showed that the lignocellulose structure obviously disrupted after fungal pretreatment. Subsequently, the pretreated WS and crude cellulases prepared from Trichoderma atroviride were applied in SSF for hydrogen production using Clostridium perfringens. The maximum hydrogen yield was obtained to be 78.5 ± 3.4 ml g−1-pretreated WS, which was about 1.8-fold than the unpretreated group. Furthermore, the modified Gompertz model was applied study the progress of cumulative H2 production. This work developed a novel bio-approach to improve fermentative H2 yield from lignocellulosic biomass.