Role of surfactant in affecting photo-fermentative bio-hydrogen production performance from corncob.

[Display omitted] • Hydrogen production performance from corncob with surfactant addition was studied. • RLs and TSn addition promote significantly the hydrogen yield from corncob. • RLs had better performance on hydrogen production than TSn. • 0.08 g/L RLs addition achieved the maximum energy conversion efficiency of 5.47%. Surfactant addition can cause a significant change in the interface state of the solution system, which is helpful to avoid agglomeration and sedimentation of solid state, and improve the mass transfer capacity. Hence, the performance of high-solid photo-fermentative bio-hydrogen production system with bio-surfactant addition was evaluated in this work. Corncob was selected as raw material, and cumulative hydrogen yield (CHY) was taken as reference. The effect of Rhamnolipids (RLs) and Tea Saponin (TSn) addition on hydrogen yield capacity was investigated. The results showed that CHY was effectively increased by the addition of RLs and TSn, the highest CHY of 356.42 ± 16.5 mL and 265.38 ± 7.5 mL appeared when the concentrations of surfactant addition were 0.08 g/L RLs and 1.5 g/L TSn, which were 67.85% and 24.97% higher than control group, respectively. The maximum energy conversion efficiency reached 5.47% and 4.08% with an increase of 67.8% and 25.2%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]