Hydrogen production through gasification of whey

Abstract

Hydrogen is one of the clean energy carriers and it is obtained from fossil and renewable energy sources and waste of the food industry. In this study, whey, which is the waste of the cheese factory, was gasified using a high-pressure batch reactor at different temperatures (300, 350, 400 ºC) and an updraft tubular reactor at (650, 700°C). In order to find out suitable gasification conditions, the effect of reaction parameters such as catalyst type (K2CO3 and NaOH), temperature (300-700 °C) and time (30-120 min) were investigated. The highest hydrogen yield (14.47 mol H2/kg Whey Powder-2) was obtained with 2.51 M NaOH at 120 min. reaction time at 400 °C.