• Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.293-298
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• 2014

An anaerobic photosynthetic treatment process utilizing purple non-sulfur photosynthetic bacteria (PNSB) was applied to the recovery of organic carbon from food processing wastewater. PNSB cells, by-product from the treatment, have high nutrition such as proteins and vitamins which are a good alternative for fish feed. Effects of light source on performance of anaerobic photosynthetic process were investigated in this study. Two bench-scale photo-bioreactors were lighted with infrared light emitting diodes (LEDs) and tungsten lamps covered with infrared transmitting filter, respectively, aiming to supply infrared light for photosynthetic bacteria growth. The photo-bioreactors were operated to treat noodle-processing wastewater for 323 days. Hydraulic retention time (HRT) was set as 6 days. Organic removals in the photo-bioreactor lighted with infrared LEDs (91%-95%) was found higher than those in photo-bioreactor with tungsten lamps with filter (79%-83%). Biomass production in a 150 L bench-scale photo-bioreactor was comparable to a 8 L small-scale photo-bioreactor in previous study, due to improvement of light supply efficiency. Application of infrared LEDs could achieve higher treatment performance with advantages in energy efficiency and wavelength specifity.

• Journal of Korean Society on Water Environment
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.339-345
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• 2004

The characteristics of $H_2$ production from livestock wastewater were investigated through an anaerobic acid forming process using Clostridium beijerinckii and the photosynthetic process using Rhodobacter sphaeroides. The submerged separation membrane was installed in the acid forming reactor, The photosynthetic process is composed of two reactors(photosynthetic reactor 1 and photosynthetic reactor 2) which is connected continually. The removal rate of COD and the production of volatile fatty acid(VFA) in the acid forming process were approximately 50% and 1000mg/L, respectively. The 70% of COD in the effluent of acid forming process was removed through the photosynthetic process. The production of $H_2$ in the photosynthetic reactor 1 and 2 was 50 and $25mLH_2/gVFA_{COD}$, respectively. The values of Y in acid forming reactor, photosynthetic reactor 1 and 2 was 0.2263, 0.0601 and 0.0393, respectively. The acetic acid and butyric acid produced in acid forming process were converted to $H_2$ by photosynthetic bacteria.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.315-323
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• 2005

The integrated or the two-stage (dark anaerobic and photosynthetic) fermentation processes were compared for the hydrogen production using purple non-sulfur photosynthetic bacteria, Rhodopseudomonas palustris P4. Cell growth, pH changes and organic acids and bacteriochlorophyll contents were monitored during the processes. Culture broth of Rps. palustris P4 exhibited dark-red during the photosynthetic culture condition, while yellow under the anaerobic condition without light. Rps. palustris P4 grown at the photosynthetic condition evolved 0.38 and 1.33 ml $H_2$/mg-dcw during the dark and the light fermentation, respectively, which were totally 1.71 ml $H_2$/mg-dcw at the two-stage fermentation. The rate of hydrogen production using Rps. palustris P4 grown under the dark anaerobic condition was 2.76 ml $H_2$/mg-dcw which consisted of 0.46 and 2.30 ml $H_2$/mg-dcw from the dark and the photosynthetic fermentation processes, respectively. Rps. palustris P4 grown under dark anaerobic conditions produced $H_2$ 1.6 times higher than that of grown under the photosynthetic condition. However, total fermentation period of the former was 1.5 times slower than that of the latter, because the induced time of hydrogen production during the photosynthetic fermentation was 96 and 24 hours when the seed culture was the dark anaerobic and photosynthetic, respectively. The integrated fermentation process by Rps. palustris P4 produced 0.52 ml $H_2$/mg-dcw(1.01 mol $H_2$/mol glucose), which was 20% of the two-stage fermentation.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.16-22
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• 2006

Biological hydrogen production processes are more environment-friendly and less energy intensive than thermochemical and electrochemical processes. The biological process can be divided into two categories: photosynthetic hydrogen production and hydrogen production by dark fermentation. Photosynthetic process produces hydrogen mainly from water and reduces $CO_2$ simultaneously. Dark fermentation is a dark and anaerobic process that produces hydrogen by fermentative bacteria from organic carbon. The article presents a survey of biological hydrogen production processes.

• KSBB Journal
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• v.20 no.6
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• pp.393-400
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• 2005

Hydrogen($H_2$) as a clean, and renewable energy carrier will be served an important role in the future energy economy. Several biological $H_2$ production processes are known and currently under development, ranging from direct bio-photolysis of water by green algae, indirect bio-photolysis by cyanobacteria including the separated two stage photolysis using the combination of green algae and photosynthetic microorganisms or green algae alone, dark anaerobic fermentation by fermentative bacteria, photo-fermentation by purple bacteria, and water gas shift reaction by photosynthetic or fermentative bacteria. In this paper, biological $H_2$ production processes, that are being explored in fundamental and applied research, are reviewed.

• Journal of environmental and Sanitary engineering
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• v.20 no.2 s.56
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• pp.12-20
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• 2005

Most of sewage treatment plants in Korea is operated for the removal of organic material. Because of low C/N ratio of domestic wastewater it is very difficult to remove nitrogen and phosphorus from wastewater. Therefore C/N ratio is key factor for the removed of nitrogen and phosphorus. PSB(photosynthetic bacteria) can remove the nutrient materials, so this study is focused on PSB characterization of nutrient removal. PSB is possible to remove nitrogen, phosphorus in anaerobic and aerobic condition. This study try to find out condition of the PSB in SBR reactor, Batch reactor. It consists of three Mode. Mode 1, 2 is to apply activated sludge process and Mode 3 is that seeded PSB in the activated sludge process. As a result of SBR process, Mode 1, 2 which was activated sludge Process showed $79\~90\%,\;66\~90\%$ of SCODcr, $94.67\~95.89\%,\;95.76\~98.56\%$ of TKN, and Mode 3 has $84\~92\%$ of SCODcr, $95.39\~99.52\%$ of TKN removal efficiency, respectively. When comparison with Mode 1, 2 and 3, most of nitrogen and phosphorus is removed at the anaerobic condition in Mode 3. but Mode 1, 2 has just revealed activated sludge process characterization. It would because of characterization of PSB.

• Applied Biological Chemistry
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.295-302
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• 1994

For the development of biological wastewater treatment process using photosynthetic bacteria (PSB), photosynthetic sludge process consisted of anaerobic digestion and PSB reactor were designed for the treatment of swine wastewater and the optimal operating conditions in flask-scale were examined. Photosynthetic bacteria from soil, pond, rice field, ditch etc. were isolated in synthetic medium containing high amount of organic acids and finally isolated one strain KK14 which showed the most degradating ability of organic acids was selected for the treatment of swine wastewater. It was identified as Rhodopseudomonas palustris. In the anaerobic digestion stage, the maximum organic acid productivity was obtained at pH 5.0, $37^{\circ}C$, HRT 2 day and under anaerobic standing condition. The optimal operating conditions of PSB reactor for the treatment of swine wastewater were pH 7.0, $30^{\circ}C$ under 4,000 lux illumination, and optimal initial COD loading (kg COD/kg D. C. W of PSB) was 2 (20% v/v seeding) in the main purification stage. Maximum removal rate of COD reached 92% under the above optimal conditions for 5 days.

• Journal of Hydrogen and New Energy
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.309-316
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• 2004

Chlamydomonas reinhardtii UTEX 90 was cultivated with continuous supply of 2% $CO_2$ using TAP media at $25^\circ{C}$ and produced biomass 1.18 g of dry cell weight/L for 4 days. C. reinhardtii algal biomass(CAB) was concentrated to 20 times by volume and converted into hydrogen and organic acids by anaerobic fermentation using Clostridium butyricum. Organic acids in the fermentate of CAB were consecutively used to produce hydrogen by Rhodobacter sphaeroides KD 131 under the light condition. Approximately 52% of starch in the concentrated CAB which had 4-5.8, 24-26 and 6-7 g/L of starch, protein and fat, respectively was degraded by Cl. butyricum at $37^\circ{C}$. During this process, hydrogen and some organic acids, such as formate, acetate, propionate, and butyrate, respectively were produced. Further conversion of the organic acids in anaerobic fermentate of CAB by Rb. sphaeroides KD131 produced hydrogen from the anaerobic fermentate under the illumination of 8 klux using halogen lamp at $30^\circ{C}$. The result showed that hydrogen was evolved by the anaerobic conversion using Cl. butyricum and then by the photosynthetic fermentation using Rb. sphaeroides KD131. It indicated that the two-step conversion process produced the maximum amount of hydrogen from algal biomass which contained carbohydrate, protein, and fat via organic acids.

• KSBB Journal
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.268-273
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• 2000

A microbiological hydrogen production process was optimized. Anaerobic photosynthetic bacteria like Rhodospirillum rubrum which is known to produce hydrogen from carbon monoxide efficiently and remove sulfur was used. To evaluate the potenital of this microorganism the optimization of media fermentation condition light intensity and light requirement for CO conversionwas tried in batch cultures and the continuous fermenter was also applied for this process. The gas residence time on CO conversion was sought out to get high conversion of carbon monoxide to hydrogen. Through this study the possibility of microbial synthtics gas concersion process was proposed.

• Biotechnology and Bioprocess Engineering:BBE
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.270-274
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• 2005

A reactor-scale hydrogen (H2) production via the water-gas shift reaction of carbon monoxide (CO) and water was studied using the purple nonsulfur bacterium, Rhodopseudomonas palustris P4. The experiment was conducted in a two-step process: an aerobic/chemoheterotrophic cell growth step and a subsequent anaerobic $H_2$ production step. Important parameters investigated included the agitation speed. inlet CO concentration and gas retention time. P4 showed a stable $H_2$ production capability with a maximum activity of 41 mmol $H_2$ g $cell^{-1}h^{-1}$ during the continuous reactor operation of 400 h. The maximal volumetric H2 production rate was estimated to be 41 mmol $H_2 L^{-1}h^{-1}$, which was about nine-fold and fifteen-fold higher than the rates reported for the photosynthetic bacteria Rhodospirillum rubrum and Rubrivivax gelatinosus, respectively. This is mainly attributed to the ability of P4 to grow to a high cell density with a high specific $H_2$ production activity. This study indicates that P4 has an outstanding potential for a continuous H2 production via the water-gas shift reaction once a proper bioreactor system that provides a high rate of gas-liquid mass transfer is developed.