Study of the Co-production of Butanol and Hydrogen by Immobilizing Clostridium Acetobutylicum CICC8012

Three kinds of carrier materials, activated carbon, bagasse and brick were used as immobilizing carriers during fermentation by Clostridium acetobutylicum CICC8012. Compared with cell suspended fermentation, enhanced fermentation performance was achieved during immobilizing cell fermentation, with shorter fermentation time required. During the experiments, hydrogen and butanol appear to be competitive events. The best fermentation performance of butanol was obtained in the case of bagasse as immobilizing carrier (5.804g/L of butanol production, 0.22g/g of yield and 0.44g/L/h of productivity), while the hydrogen yield was just 1.41 mol/mol. The highest hydrogen productivity (402mL/L/h) and yield (1.808mol/mol glucose) could be obtained in the case of brick as immobilizing carrier, while the butanol yield was 0.18 g/g. The highest hydrogen concentration of 66.76 % was obtained in the case of activated carbon as immobilizing carrier.