Pressurized cultivation strategies for improved microbial hydrogen production by Thermococcus onnurineus NA1

While the hydrogen economy is receiving growing attention, research on microbial hydrogen production is also increasing. Microbial water-gas shift reaction is advantageous as it produces hydrogen from by product gas including carbon monoxide (CO). However, CO solubility in water is the bottleneck of this process by low mass transfer. Thermococcus onnurineus NA1 strain can endure a high-pressure environment and can enhance hydrogen production in a pressurized reactor by increasing CO solubility. As CO causes cell toxicity, two important factors, pressure and input gas flow rate, should be considered for process control during cultivation. Hence, we employed different operational strategies for enhancing hydrogen production and obtained 577 mmol/L/h of hydrogen productivity. This is the highest hydrogen productivity reported to date from microbial water-gas shift reaction.