Dark Fermentative Biohydrogen Production: Recent Advances and Challenges

Abstract

The growing demand for hydrogen gas as a fuel has led to the development of efficient technologies for production of hydrogen from renewable sources. Biohydrogen generation technologies such as waste to wealth systems have enormous potential for commercial applications and scaleup. In the present Review, the dependence of various process conditions and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation studies on the yield, production rate, and hydrodynamics of the reactors has been discussed on various scales of operation. The optimum operating parameters, scaleup aspects, and comparative analysis for various feedstocks have shown sugar cane molasses as a potential substrate along with other cosubstrates like groundnut deoiled cake for dark fermentative biohydrogen production on a commercial scale. In addition, the works of various research groups for pilot scale biohydrogen production and a roadmap toward the future work in this field has been discussed.