Abstract
When hydrogen burns in air, it produces nothing but water vapour. It is therefore the cleanest possible, totally non-polluting fuel. This fact has led some people to propose an energy economy based entirely on hydrogen, in which hydrogen would replace gasoline, oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear power. Hydrogen is a clean energy source. Therefore, in recent years, demand on hydrogen production has increased considerably. Electrolysis of water, steam reforming of hydrocarbons and auto-thermal processes are well-known methods for hydrogen gas production, but not cost-effective due to high energy requirements. As compare to chemical methods, biological production of hydrogen gas has significant advantages such as bio-photolysis of water by algae, dark and photo-fermentation of organic materials, usually carbohydrates by bacteria. New approach for bio-hydrogen production is dark and photo-fermentation process but with some major problems like dark and photo-fermentative hydrogen production is the raw material cost. By using suitable bio-process technologies hydrogen can be produced through carbohydrate rich, nitrogen deficient solid wastes such as cellulose and starch containing agricultural and food industry wastes and some food industry wastewaters such as cheese whey, olive mill and baker's yeast industry wastewaters. Utilization of aforementioned wastes for hydrogen production provides inexpensive energy generation with simultaneous waste treatment. This review article summarizes bio-hydrogen production from some waste materials with recent developments and relative advantages.
Highlights
The energy need has been increasing exponentially all over world-wide, the reserves of fossil fuels are going to deplete very soon in near future, and serious negative effects of the combustion of fossil fuels are spreading throughout because of CO2 emission is growing day by day in the atmospheric air
Based on the National Hydrogen program of the United States, the contribution of hydrogen to total energy market will be 8–10% by 2025 [2]. It was reported by the US Department of Energy (US-DOE) that H2 power and transport systems will be available in all regions of the United States by the year 2040 [3]
Hydrogen is considered as the ‘energy for future’ since it is a clean energy source with high energy content as compared to hydrocarbon fuels
Summary
The energy need has been increasing exponentially all over world-wide, the reserves of fossil fuels are going to deplete very soon in near future, and serious negative effects of the combustion of fossil fuels are spreading throughout because of CO2 emission is growing day by day in the atmospheric air. Based on the National Hydrogen program of the United States, the contribution of hydrogen to total energy market will be 8–10% by 2025 [2] It was reported by the US Department of Energy (US-DOE) that H2 power and transport systems will be available in all regions of the United States by the year 2040 [3]. Due to this level of increasing need for hydrogen energy, in recent years there is urgent need to pay attention on finding the costeffective development and efficient hydrogen production technologies. With the use of sustainable technologies production of clean energy source and utilization of waste materials make biological hydrogen production a novel and promising approach to meet the increasing energy needs
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