Enhanced anaerobic hydrogen production from cotton straws assisted by copper molybdate

Hydrogen production from dark fermentation has potential application due to its environmental friendliness, low production cost, and sustainability. However, there is still an obstacle to improving the efficiency of bioH₂ production to meet the requirements in practical applications. In this research, copper molybdates are synthesized under different pH conditions as additives to study their different influence processes during anaerobic hydrogen production from cotton straws with the pure cultural system. A series of results indicate that CuMoO₄ with appropriate experimental conditions has the highest H₂ yield at 191.3 mL/g straws at 37 °C, which is 236% higher than the control group. It can be shown that O. ethanolica 8KG-4 has an obvious accompanying with high stability and low cytotoxicity for this clean energy production system as well as the improvement of metabolic pathway. These results extend new thinking of obtaining higher H₂ yield as a biofuel in future production.