Mass transfer evaluation of substrate, intermediate products and inhibitors in membrane bioreactor on biogas production

• Published in: IOP conference series. Materials Science and Engineering 2020-04, Vol.778 (1), p.12156
• Main Authors: Hidayat, M, Kurniawan, I G, Prakosa, M A, Dökümcü, S, Millati, R, Cahyanto, M N
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Acetic acid; Biogas; Bioreactors; Chromatography; D-limonene; Difluorides; Fermentation; Gas chromatography; Glucose; High performance liquid chromatography; Inhibitors; Mass transfer; membrane bioreactor; Membranes; Microorganisms; Permeability; PVDF and PES; Selectivity; Substrate inhibition; xanthone
• ISSN: 1757-8981; 1757-899X
• DOI: 10.1088/1757-899X/778/1/012156

Problem of fruit wastes can be minimized by fermenting them to produce biogas. Biogas production using membrane bioreactor (MBR) is an effort to prevent microbial washout especially with the presence of some inhibitors such as D-limonene and xanthone that are naturally originated from the fruits. In the membrane system, nutritional compounds such as glucose (substrate) and acetic acid (intermediate product) in fruit waste are expected to pass through, but the inhibitors are retained as membrane is hydrophilic and the inhibitors are hydrophobic. Two membranes poly vinylidine difluoride (PVDF) and poly ether sulfone (PES) were used. In this study, permeability of inhibitors and nutritional compounds across the membranes were evaluated. In the separated experiments, D-limonene or xanthone solution as inhibitors and glucose or acetic acid as nutritional compounds at various concentrations were pumped through the membrane placed in a module. Flux of compounds through membrane was determined by collecting each milliliter of permeate at a certain time. The concentration of compounds in the feed and permeate were analyzed using gas chromatography or high performance liquid chromatography. Permeability of compounds were calculated the obtained concentration and flux. The results showed that both membranes are able to retain the inhibitors while the substrate (glucose) and intermediate product (acetic acid) are let go across the membranes. The result showed that PES had better performance than PVDF in term of flux, while the selectivity is fairly the same for both membranes. Thus, it can be concluded that PES is more suitable for fermentation using membrane bioreactors.