Abstract:Aiming to combine the advantage of photofermentation and darkfermentation for biohydrogen production, the mixed photosynthetic and anaerobic bacteria consortium (MPAC) was used to study the cofermentative hydrogen production. The kinetic characteristics of cofermentative hydrogen production by MPAC were studied. The kinetic models of cell growth, substrate utilization and hydrogen production of cofermentative hydrogen production by MPAC were established. The illumination factor was firstly introduced into the kinetic model of biohydrogen production. The nonlinear differential equation was solved by homotopy perturbation method (HPM) and the kinetic models were obtained. By comparing with the experimental data, the model can be consistent with the experimental data, which can well reflect the change of biomass concentration, substrate concentration and hydrogen production in the process of cofermentative hydrogen production. The relationship between the kinetic parameters and the sensitivity of the three established kinetic models were analyzed. The results showed that the maximum specific growth rate of the kinetic models had the biggest influence on the results, and the change of the cell growth reached 79%, the change of substrate concentration reached 118%, and the change of hydrogen produced reached 98.4%. The three established models were suitable for describing the kinetic characteristics of biohydrogen production.