【Paper】
Spontaneous Hydrogen Production from Wheat Bran
Fumiaki Taguchi* and Reiko Yano*
* Department of Environmental Microbiology, Kitasato University Graduate School of Medical Sciences
† Correspondence should be addressed to Fumiaki Taguchi:
（1-15-1 Kitasato, Sagamihara, Kanagawa, 228-8555 Japan）


Abstract
Hydrogen was generated spontaneously from wheat bran moistened with de-ionized water and kept warm in an incubator at 36℃ overnight. The conditions for spontaneous hydrogen production from wheat bran were examined, 40g of wheat bran, 15g of trypticase soy broth powder and 500mL of de-ionized water were mixed in a 1,000mL flask and kept in a 45℃ water bath. Gas production began about six hours after incubation, with the amounts of gas increasing rapidly thereafter. When the pH of the culture was maintained at pH5.2, the hydrogen gas generation peaked at about 2,400mL in total. The initial weight of the wheat bran decreased from 40g by about 10g after spontaneous hydrogen production. From these results, it was found that 60mL/g of hydrogen gas was produced from wheat bran and 240mL/g was produced from the material consumed. As a control test, the quantity of hydrogen generated from glucose was compared with that generated from wheat bran. 10g of wheat bran or 5g of glucose, and 15g of trypticase soy broth powder in 450mL of de-ionized water were sterilized in an autoclave, mixed with 50mL of culture of the hydrogen-producing bacterial strain AM21B in an anaerobic glove box and incubated at 37℃ and pH5.7. From the 10g of wheat bran and the 5g of glucose, 1,328mL and 1,776mL of hydrogen were produced, respectively. These results show that 133mL/g of hydrogen from wheat bran and 355mL/g from glucose were produced using AM21B, and the amount of hydrogen gas produced from 10g of wheat bran was equivalent to that from 3.75g of glucose. In addition, the composition of the gas generated spontaneously from wheat bran was approximately 70％ hydrogen, 28％ carbon dioxide and about 2％ nitrogen and oxygen.


Key words: spontaneous production, hydrogen, wheat bran, hydrogen-producing bacterium AM21B