Hydrogen will be one of the most potential energy in the future mainly due to its cleanliness

renewablility and non-polluting nature.At present

the hydrogen-producing ability of bacteria is low

which is one of key factors restricting the development of fermentative hydrogen production industry.Ultraviolet ray was used to mutate a wild hydrogen-producing strain

Ethanoligenens sp.ZGX4

in order to screen highly efficient H2-producing mutants.After investigating the hydrogen production stability of successive generations

a highly efficient hydrogen-producing mutant UV-d48 was obtained

and batch tests were conducted to investigate the H2-producing behavior of mutant UV-d48.The experiment results showed that UV-d48 had H2-producing capability of 2998.5 ml·L-1 and maximal H2 production rate of 34.4 mmol·(g drycell)-1·h-1 at 37℃

initial glucose concentration of 10 g·L-1 and pH of 6.0

which were higher by 65.1% and 56.4% than that of the wild parent strain ZGX4

respectively.Moreover

its hydrogen yield was estimated to be 2.61 mol H2·(mol glucose)-1

which was 1.54-fold higher than that of the control strain ZGX4.Since mutant UV-d48 performed typical ethanol-type fermentation in the course of H2 production

it might be used as a very important carrier material to investigate the metabolic pathway and mechanism of ethanol-type fermentation bacteria.