Experimental Study of Hydrogen Fermentation of Seaweeds for Efficient Operation

Hydrogen fermentation is a biological conversion process in the middle of methane fermentation. This study proposes hydrogen fermentation using marine biomass, especially seaweeds. In this study, we perform experiments of hydrogen fermentation with Hyogo paste as a representative of decolored seaweeds and examine the factor related to the efficiency of hydrogen fermentation. In comparison, brown seaweeds (wakame in Japanese, whose stems are treated as waste) are used in a same experiment. We focus on organic acids, which are by-products in hydrogen fermentation, and microbial community with new generation sequencer (NGS). The results indicate that how bacterial community and VFA are controlled is very important for efficient operations.