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Techno‐economic evaluation of a two‐step biological process for hydrogen production
Author(s) -
Ljunggren Mattias,
Zacchi Guido
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
biotechnology progress
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.572
H-Index - 129
eISSN - 1520-6033
pISSN - 8756-7938
DOI - 10.1002/btpr.336
Subject(s) - biohydrogen , hydrogen production , dark fermentation , commodity chemicals , fermentative hydrogen production , raw material , environmental science , production (economics) , pulp and paper industry , biomass (ecology) , process engineering , biofuel , biochemical engineering , hydrogen , microbiology and biotechnology , chemistry , waste management , engineering , economics , ecology , catalysis , biology , organic chemistry , macroeconomics , biochemistry
An integrated biological process for the production of hydrogen based on thermophilic and photo‐heterotrophic fermentation was evaluated from a technical and economic standpoint. Besides the two fermentation steps the process also includes pretreatment of the raw material (potato steam peels) and purification of hydrogen using amine absorption. The study aimed neither at determining the absolute cost of biohydrogen nor at an economic optimization of the production process, but rather at studying the effects of different parameters on the production costs of biohydrogen as a guideline for future improvements. The effect of the key parameters, hydrogen productivity and yield and substrate concentration in the two fermentations on the cost of the hydrogen produced was studied. The selection of the process conditions was based mainly on laboratory data. The process was simulated by use of the software Aspen Plus and the capital costs were estimated using the program Aspen Icarus Process Evaluator. The study shows that the photo‐fermentation is the main contributor to the hydrogen production cost mainly because of the cost of plastic tubing, for the photo‐fermentors, which represents 40.5% of the hydrogen production cost. The costs of the capital investment and chemicals were also notable contributors to the hydrogen production cost. Major economic improvements could be achieved by increasing the productivity of the two fermentation steps on a medium‐term to long‐term scale. © 2009 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Biotechnol. Prog., 2010