Surfactant induced sonic fission: an effective strategy for biohydrogen recovery from sea grass Syringodiumisoetifolium

Summary Sea grass (Syringodiumisoetifolium) is a promising source of bioenergy such as hydrogen. Due to the complex cell structure, it requires a pretreatment process prior to fermentation. This study aims to increase the biohydrogen production from sea grass by enhancing the solubilization via surfactant induced sonic fission (SSF). Initially, sonic fission (SF) pretreatment alone was carried out intherange of power from 0.02 kW to 0.18 kW for 0 minutes to 60 minutes. At the optimum condition of SF (0.14 kW, 30 minutes), ammonium dodecyl sulfate, a surfactant was added to improve the pretreatment by reducing its disintegration time period. The condition of SSF 0.14 kW (sonic power), 0.0025 g/g TS (surfactant dosage) and 11 minutes (time) was considered as optimum for effective solubilization of sea grass. The study results illustrated that highersolubilizationof 20.7% was attained through SSF when compared with SF (13.5%). Higher biohydrogen (H2) production of 114(mL H2/g COD) was obtained in SSF when compared to SF.