Date of Award:
12-2008
Document Type:
Thesis
Degree Name:
Master of Science (MS)
Department:
Civil and Environmental Engineering
Department name when degree awarded
Biological and Irrigation Engineering
Committee Chair(s)
Conly L. Hansen
Committee
Conly L. Hansen
Committee
Carl S. Hansen
Committee
Sridhar Viamajala
Abstract
Hydrogen production by means of anaerobic fermentation was researched utilizing three different substrates. Synthetic wastewater, dairy manure, and cheese whey were combined together at different concentrations under batch anaerobic conditions to determine the optimal hydrogen producing potential and waste treatment of each. Cheese whey at a concentration of 55% was combined with dairy manure at a concentration of 45% to produce 1.53 liters of hydrogen per liter of substrate. These results are significant because the control, synthetic wastewater, which was a glucose-based substrate, produced less hydrogen, 1.34 liters per liter of substrate, than the mixture of cheese whey and dairy manure. These findings indicate that cheese whey and dairy manure, which are of little value, have potential to produce clean combusting hydrogen fuel.
The effluent from the anaerobic hydrogen fermentations was then placed into a second continuous-fed reactor as part of a two-phase anaerobic digestion system. This system was designed to produce hydrogen and methane for a mixture of approximately 10% hydrogen. The two-stage process also further treated the synthetic wastewater, dairy manure, and cheese whey. The two-phase anaerobic methanogenic reactor was shown to produce more methane in the second phase (56 L IBR anaerobic digester), 1.36 mL per minute per liter substrate, as compared to the single-phase anaerobic reactor (56 L IBR), which produced 1.22 mL per minute per liter substrate.
In general, this research has suggested that agricultural and food processing wastes provide the needed nutrients for hydrogen production and that a two-phase anaerobic digestion system is ideally set up to produce hydrogen-methane mixtures while treating wastes for discharge into the environment.
Checksum
c25761a385a8a882333d1b95a5ee47d3
Recommended Citation
Thompson, Reese S., "Hydrogen Production by Anaerobic Fermentation Using Agricultural and Food Processing Wastes Utilizing a Two-Stage Digestion System" (2008). All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023. 208.
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/etd/208
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