Bio-Hydrogen & Bio-Butanol Generation by Bacteria Isolated from Spent Mushroom Substrate.

Abstract

The world is now being overwhelmed by many kinds of waste. Agricultural waste is a major issue, especially in emerging countries, where there is usually no recycling facilities. This study focuses on Spent Mushroom Substrate, which is the compost material remaining after a few cropping cycles of the mushroom industry. The main objective of our study is to isolate and cultivate bacteria from this Spent Mushroom Substrate.

An anaerobic fermentation process producing bio-hydrogen and bio-butanol is studied, using classic carbohydrates such as glucose, xylose, cellulose and xylan, and then Spent Mushroom Substrate as carbon sources for the micro-organisms. Few previous studies were done on this topic.

In this study, three strains of bacteria were isolated from Spent Mushroom Substrate, able to generate value-added products from simple carbohydrates (predominantly glucose). A full DNA analysis was conducted for the two best strains. We further performed a thorough study of these bacteria growing on several kinds of Spent Mushroom Substrate, in order to assess which kind of Spent Mushroom Substrate could be used efficiently.

The last part of the study is a pre-industrial simulation. We upscaled the laboratory experiment in order to test whether the process could be done on-site, directly in a mushroom farm.