Effect of Iron Nanoparticles on Hyacinth’s Fermentation

Biomass feedstock is desirable for bio-hydrogen and bioethanol production as they have less competition with food crops and are hard to be localized geographically. Water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) is the fastest growing plant, containing abundant of cellulose and hemicellulose which can be easily converted into fermentable sugars and is more suitable feedstock for bio-hydrogen and bioethanol. In this study bio-hydrogen and bioethanol were produced from dry biomass of water hyacinth by microbial fermentation under influence of iron nanoparticles. For fermentative bio-hydrogen production dry powdered biomass was first pretreated and then saccharified into fermentable sugars by enzymes. Sugars of enzymatic hydrolysis were xylose and glucose with concentration of 9.0% and 8.0% respectively. For bioethanol production dry plant was saccharified with 1% sulfuric acid solution, autoclaved at 121°C, 15 lbs for 1.5h. The reducing sugar obtained in this method containing 5% glucose. Results showed that the specific concentration of iron nanoparticles was able to enhance the hydrogen yield. Ethanol yield was enhanced by iron nanoparticles by using it in certain concentration range during fermentation. Maximum hydrogen yield of 57mL/g of dry weight based plant biomass was obtained at 250mg/L concentration of iron nanoparticles which is 85.50% of the maximum theoretical yield. The maximum ethanol yield of 0.0232g of dry weight plant biomass was obtained at concentration of 150mg/L of iron nanoparticles. The ethanol yield constitutes 90.98% of the maximum theoretical yield at iron nanoparticles.