Influence of nanomaterials in biohydrogen production through photo fermentation and photolysis - Review on applications and mechanism

Abstract

The pressure on reducing greenhouse gas emissions has increased since the focus on climate change mitigation has grown. As the human development index is directly related to per capita energy consumption, sustainable energy production with reduced carbon footprint is the essential pathway for cleaner environment. Over numerous existing biological processes, hydrogen production via photo fermentation and photolysis of water is considered a more sustainable and economical method of hydrogen production. While both biological modes suffer from certain limitations, such as low yields and low production rates, practical implementation is still a long way off due to these limitations. The unique properties of nanomaterials (NMs) can help increase the efficiency of the biomass to biohydrogen process in significant ways. Applications of organic and inorganic nanoparticles in photocatalytic and photo fermentative hydrogen production is discussed in this paper. This review reports a wide range of applications of nanomaterials including the details of photo fermentative microorganisms and their mechanism of action. The maximum photo fermentative bio-H2 production was reported in the presence of SiC–Fe3O4(3.02 mol H2/mol acetate), Ni (41 mol H2/mol sugar), graphite-C3N4 (64.2 mol H2/mol sugar) whereas photocatalytic bio-H2 yield was highest when Pd–Ni/CdS (54 mmol/g.h), Ni-MO/g-C3N4 (1785 mmol/g.h) and CuO/TiO2 (20.3 mmol/g.h) nanoparticles were employed. To design photocatalytic systems for practical and scalable use, the future research should be focused on deeper theoretical knowledge of mechanisms of light harvesting, ± charge separation and transport, surface biochemical reactions, semiconductor–liquid interactions, and reactor dynamics.