A Review on Bio-hydrogen Production from Food Waste: Potential and Challenges

Abstract

The global energy demand is increasing immensely with rapid population growth, urbanization, and industrialization. At present, fossil fuel is the major source of world energy. However, the rapid depletion of fossil fuel energy, environmental pollution concerns, and increasing demand due to rapid population growth, urbanization, and industrialization have led to exploring alternative energy sources to conventional fossil fuel. Bio-hydrogen is viewed as a promising renewable biofuel and it has great potential to mitigate the rising energy demand. Due to the great energy potential of hydrogen, a number of studies have been conducted on hydrogen production from various renewable resources. Challenges that are being faced in large-scale hydrogen production are low hydrogen yield, selection of suitable technology, and availability of feedstock for hydrogen production. A large amount of food waste is generated every day. The most common disposal method of food waste is open dumping in a landfill. This inappropriate disposal of food waste poses severe environmental pollution. However, food waste could be utilized as a potential feedstock for bio-hydrogen production because of its significant amount of carbohydrate, fate, and protein compositions. Therefore, the present study was conducted to determine the potential and limitations of utilizing food waste as a source for bio-hydrogen production by reviewing the compositions of food waste, and factors influencing hydrogen production from food waste. The findings of the present study will be a harmony of sustainable utilization of food waste as a potential source for bio-hydrogen production.