Biohythane production from organic wastes: present state of art.

Abstract

The economy of an industrialized country is greatly dependent on fossil fuels. However, these nonrenewable sources of energy are nearing the brink of extinction. Moreover, the reliance on these fuels has led to increased levels of pollution which have caused serious adverse impacts on the environment. Hydrogen has emerged as a promising alternative since it does not produce CO2 during combustion and also has the highest calorific value. The biohythane process comprises of biohydrogen production followed by biomethanation. Biological H2 production has an edge over its chemical counterpart mainly because it is environmentally benign. Maximization of gaseous energy recovery could be achieved by integrating dark fermentative hydrogen production followed by biomethanation. Intensive research work has already been carried out on the advancement of biohydrogen production processes, such as the development of suitable microbial consortium (mesophiles or thermophiles), genetically modified microorganism, improvement of the reactor designs, use of different solid matrices for the immobilization of whole cells, and development of two-stage process for higher rate of H2 production. Scale-up studies of the dark fermentation process was successfully carried out in 20- and 800-L reactors. However, the total gaseous energy recovery for two stage process was found to be 53.6%. From single-stage H2 production, gaseous energy recovery was only 28%. Thus, two-stage systems not only help in improving gaseous energy recovery but also can make biohythane (mixture of H2 and CH4) concept commercially feasible.