Ramírez-Morales Juan E, Tapia-Venegas Estela, Toledo-Alarcón Javiera, Ruiz-Filippi Gonzalo
Escuela de Ingeniería Bioquímica, Facultad de Ingeniería, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, General Cruz 34, Valparaíso, Chile E-mail:
Water Sci Technol. 2015;71(9):1271-85. doi: 10.2166/wst.2015.104.
Hydrogen production by dark fermentation is one promising technology. However, there are challenges in improving the performance and efficiency of the process. The important factors that must be considered to obtain a suitable process are the source of the inoculum and its pre-treatment, types of substrates, the reactor configurations and the hydrogen partial pressure. Furthermore, to obtain high-quality hydrogen, it is necessary to integrate an effective separation procedure that is compatible with the intrinsic characteristics of a biological process. Recent studies have suggested that a stable and robust process could be established if there was an effective selection of a mixed microbial consortium with metabolic pathways directly targeted to high hydrogen yields. Additionally, the integration of membrane technology for the extraction and separation of the hydrogen produced has advantages for the upgrading step, because this technology could play an important role in reducing the negative effect of the hydrogen partial pressure. Using this technology, it has been possible to implement a production-purification system, the 'hydrogen-extractive membrane bioreactor'. This configuration has great potential for direct applications, such as fuel cells, but studies of new membrane materials, module designs and reactor configurations are required to achieve higher separation efficiencies.
通过暗发酵制氢是一项很有前景的技术。然而，在提高该过程的性能和效率方面存在挑战。要获得合适的工艺，必须考虑的重要因素包括接种物的来源及其预处理、底物类型、反应器配置和氢气分压。此外，为了获得高质量的氢气，有必要整合一种与生物过程固有特性相兼容的有效分离程序。最近的研究表明，如果能有效选择具有直接针对高氢气产量的代谢途径的混合微生物群落，就可以建立一个稳定且强大的工艺。此外，将膜技术用于所产生氢气的提取和分离，对于升级步骤具有优势，因为该技术在降低氢气分压的负面影响方面可以发挥重要作用。利用这项技术，已经有可能实现一个生产-纯化系统，即“氢气提取膜生物反应器”。这种配置在诸如燃料电池等直接应用方面具有巨大潜力，但需要研究新型膜材料、模块设计和反应器配置以实现更高的分离效率。
