Dark Fermentation: a green way to produce hydrogen and methane

Dark fermentation is an efficient way for the degradation of organic matter with the help of microorganism. It basicallydeals with the organic matter present in the solid or liquid waste. The anaerobic microbes such as Clostridium,Enterobacter, Escherichia etc. are found to be potential to degrade the organic matter in the useful product such ashydrogen and methane. The enormous type of waste such as industrial waste water , industrial sludge, and other organicwaste can be degrade in the useful product such as hydrogen, alcohol and methane by dark fermentation but it is mostlyperform for the production of hydrogen as well as methane. Conversion of substrate to hydrogen perform by a series ofbiochemical reactions and microorganisms and it is still inefficient. In the fermentative process most of the organicfraction remains as soluble fermentation products such as acetic, propionic, butyric acid and ethanol. In spite of theoreticalconversion efficiency of 33% only 15% of the energy from the organic source is typically obtained in the form of hydrogenand remaining 67-85% of the substrate remains unused. One way to utilize the remaining organic matter in a usable formfor energy production is to produce methane.