Neural network nonlinear modeling for hydrogen production using anaerobic fermentation

The potential of utilizing artificial neural network (ANN) model approach for simulate and predict the hydrogen yield in batch model using Clostridium saccharoperbutylacetonicum N1-4 (ATCC 13564) was investigated. A unique architecture has been introduced in this research to mimic the inter-relationship between three input parameters initial substrate, initial medium pH and reaction temperature (37 °C, 6.0 ± 0.2, 10), respectively, to predict hydrogen yield. Sixty data records from the experiment have been utilized to develop the ANN model. The results showed that the proposed ANN model provided significant level of accuracy for prediction with maximum error (10 %). Furthermore, a comparative analysis with a traditional approach Box–Wilson design (BWD) has proved that the ANN model output significantly outperformed the BWD. ANN model overcomes the limitation of the BWD approach with respect to the number of records, which is merely considering limited length of stochastic pattern for hydrogen yield (15 records).