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Research Projects for PNRR I8,
contract 760271/2024
Project code: C9-I8-C39
Project title: Selective
resource recovery from kitchen waste by integrated Dark Fermentation-Microbial
electrolysis cell and ion substitution electrodialysis
Total Funding: 5.224.812,69 Ron (1.051.629,87
Eur)
Project
duration: 28 months
Project
Leader: Prof. Makarand M.
Ghangrekar
Contact:
incemc@incemc.ro
Financing Authority: European Union, Ministry
of Research, Innovation and
Digitization, PNRR
Host Institution: National Institute for Research and
Development in Electrochemistry and Condensed Matter Timisoara - INCEMC
Project
Abstract
In recent years, environment friendly and sustainable biohydrogen (H2) and volatile fatty acid (VFA) production methods, such as dark fermentation (DF) and microbial electrolysis cells (MEC), have been developed. These technologies have an upper hand over conventional petro-based production methods of H2, due to their ability to utilize biomass (i.e., food waste) as substrate, which is generated in large quantities in Romania. Hydrolysis-acidification systems during DF are suitable for recovering renewable resources such as carboxylic acids, including short-chain fatty acids (SCFA), medium-chain fatty acids (MCFA), and H2. However, the key barriers to large-scale H2 and VFA generation using DF are low H2 production, bioprocess instability, and low VFA yields due to formation of other byproducts. Improving process metrics (yield, production capacity) of DF requires a profound knowledge of microorganisms present in mixed culture and their possible interactions with each other, utilization of appropriate substrates, and coupling of DF with other biological processes like MEC. Previous research has focused on improving H2 production, however no research has been conducted to extract carboxylic acids to enhance the overall bioresource recovery. Hence, present investigation aims to develop an efficient integrated DF-MEC-Ion substitution electrodialysis based H2 and carboxylic acids recovery system for extracting VFA and H2 from kitchen waste.
In current project, technological
constraints, such as pre-treatment requirement of kitchen waste, inoculum
preparation, and low H2 generation efficiency will be addressed.
Further, VFA recovery from fermentation media during acidogenesis and process
optimization for a cost-effective zero discharge technology implementation will
be carried out. Finally, the project aims to demonstrate H2
production and VFA recovery from kitchen waste over a pilot scale (100 L)
reactor.
Project objectives
O1 Biochemical
characterization and development of an integrated pre-treatment system for the
suppression of HCB and enhanced sugar
recovery in kitchen waste;
O2 Develop
protocols for establishing enriched inoculum for DF and MEC;
O3 Process
optimization for DF-based hydrogen and VFA production using enriched inoculum;
O4 Dark
fermentation effluent treatment in MEC for H2 production and
recovery of highly selected VFA by integrated MEC-Ion substitution
electrodialysis;
O5 Process
optimization of integrated DF-MEC-ED in hydrochar based zero discharge model;
O6 Economic
and environment sustainability for H2 and VFA recovery from kitchen
waste.
Project team:
Prof. Makarand M. Ghangrekar - Project director
PhD Debkumar
Chakraborty - Team member
PhD Gorakhanath Jadhav - PostDoc
PhD Anil Dhanda -
Team member
PhD Ionel Balcu - Team member
PhD Narcis
Duțeanu - Team member
PhD
Paula Sfîrloagă
- Team member
PhD Corina Macarie - PostDoc
PhD Doru Buzatu - PostDoc
PhD Paula Svera
Ianăși - PostDoc
PhD Nicoleta Nemeș - Team member
PNRR. Finanțat de Uniunea Europeană
– UrmătoareaGenerațieUE
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