Accelerated Methanogenesis for the Conversion of Biomethane from Carbon Dioxide and Biohydrogen at Hyperthermophilic Condition

Methanogenesis is the conversion of carbon dioxide (CO2) to methane (CH4) using microbes. In the context CO2 utilization, methanogenesis process in the utilizing native microbes from a particular reservoir can be a very slow process without any external intervention. To accelerate the conversion rate and methane yield, this study investigates the use of agriculture by-product such as palm oil mill effluent (POME) as substrates as well as potential microbial isolates that can produce biohydrogen at high temperatures. This paper covers the three laboratory assessments of microbes from anaerobic sludge from a local palm oil mill, use of POME to augment the microbial growth, and physicochemical manipulation to identify key parameters that increases CH4 yield and rate: i) biohydrogen production ii) biomethane production, and iii) syntrophic reactions. All experiments are conducted at 70°C which is considered a hyperthermophilic condition for many microbes. Biohydrogen production achieved with highest H2 production of 66.00 (mL/Lmedium). For biomethane production, the highest production rate achieved was 0.0768 CH4 µmol/mL/day which 10,000X higher than 19.6 pmol/mL/day used as a benchmark. Syntrophic reaction with both types of hydrogen-producing and methanogen in the same reactor, and pure H2 and CO2 supplemented externally was able to achieve the highest methane production of 10.095 µmol/mL and 2.524 µmol/ml/day. Methane production rate is 2.5 times faster than without external gasses being introduced. Introduction of external CO2 to the syntrophic reaction is to mimic actual carbon injection and storage in the reservoir. Our paper shows that stimulation of microbes using POME as substrates and H2/CO2 supplementation are important in accelerating the rate of methane production and yield. Future work will focus on optimizing the gas ratio, pH of growth media, and performing syntrophic reaction in porous media to emulate conditions of a reservoir.