Bio-hydrogen production from waste materials

Hydrogen is a valuable gas as a clean energy source and as feedstock for some industries. Therefore, demand on hydrogen production has increased considerably in recent years. 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. Biological production of hydrogen gas has significant advantages over chemical methods. The major biological processes utilized for hydrogen gas production are bio-photolysis of water by algae, dark and photo-fermentation of organic materials, usually carbohydrates by bacteria. Sequential dark and photo-fermentation process is a rather new approach for bio-hydrogen production. One of the major problems in dark and photo-fermentative hydrogen production is the raw material cost. 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 bakers yeast industry wastewaters can be used for hydrogen production by using suitable bio-process technologies. 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. Types of potential waste materials, bio-processing strategies, microbial cultures to be used, bio-processing conditions and the recent developments are discussed with their relative advantages. © 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.