Generating Biohydrogen from Brewery Wastewater
The project goal is to develop and optimize a composite membrane system to extract energy, in the form of hydrogen gas, from high strength wastewater streams, turning a source of waste into a renewable resource. The system consists of a multilayered reactive membrane containing layers of (1) hydrophilic and (2) hydrophobic silica-based materials in contact with one another. Hydrogen-producing acetogenic bacteria are encapsulated in the hydrophilic layer where they can degrade energy rich organics in the waste into biohydrogen gas.
William A. Arnold, Paige Novak, Craig Warren Davis, and Kuang Zhu