Application of a modified Anaerobic Digestion Model 1 version for fermentative hydrogen production from sweet sorghum extract by Ruminococcus albus

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a developed, ADM1-based kinetic model for the hydrogen production process in batch and continuous cultures of the bacterium Ruminococcus albus grown on sweet sorghum extract as the sole carbon source. Although sorghum extract is known to contain at least two different sugars, i.e. sucrose and glucose, no biphasic growth was observed in batch cultures as such growth is reported to occur in cultures of R. albus with mixed substrates. Thus, taking into account that the main sugar of sweet sorghum extract is sucrose, batch experiments with different initial concentrations of sucrose were performed in order to estimate the growth kinetics of the bacterium on this substrate. The kinetic parameters used, concerning the endogenous metabolism of the bacterium as well as those concerning the effect of pH and hydrogen partial pressure (P_H2), were the same as those estimated in a previous study with glucose as carbon source. Subsequently, the experimental data of batch and continuous experiments with sweet sorghum extract were simulated based on the already developed, modified ADM1 model accounting for the use of sugar-based substrate. It was shown that the model which was developed on synthetic substrates was successful in adequately describing the behavior of the microorganism on a real substrate such as sweet sorghum extract and predicting the experimental results quite well with a deviation of the model predictions from the experimental results being between 5-18% for the hydrogen yield.