A review of measurement methods of biological hydrogen

Abstract The current review purpose is to present a general overview of measurement methods of hydrogen in dark fermentative hydrogen production. The gas measurement is performed with manometric and volumetric devices by manual and automatic methods. The hydrogen gas measuring devices must be simple to construct and use, inexpensive, accurate, durable, and economical. The methods of water displacement, plunger displacement, commercial gas meter, respirometer, and manometric were used to measure volume and rate of biogas. For measurement of hydrogen fraction in the biogas, gas chromatography and hydrogen sensor were employed. The advantages and drawbacks of each method are highlighted and some works of their uses in dark fermentation are presented. Literature shows that the water displacement method and gas meter were extensively used to measure biogas volume and flow and gas chromatography with thermal conductivity detector with a Molecular Sieve 5A column and nitrogen as carrier was widely employed to measure biohydrogen.