1.5.

25 Hydrogen can be recovered equivalent to only 20 to 30 % of total energy through

dark fermentation and therefore has limitations in commercialization, even though this
process can be integrated with photo-fermentation. Theoretically, 12 moles of hydrogen
/mole of glucose can be recovered from integrated dark and photo fermentation reactors but
due to scaling up problem of photo-fermentation such two-stage process cannot
commercialized. The dark fermentation for hydrogen production can be commercialized, if it
is integrated with biomethantion process. The spent media of the dark fermentation is rich in
volatile fatty acids and would be an ideal substrate for methanogens. The integration of
these two processes might lead to 50-60% gaseous energy recovery. Most attractive point
of such process is that the reactor used for hydrogen production could be used for bio-
methanation also, 14
thus separate reactors are not required. Biohymet production could be envisioned as
renewable source of energy only, when it would be produced from renewable sources.
f) Thermochemical splitting of water
1.5.26 Water can be dissociated at very high temperatures into hydrogen and oxygen
through thermochemical splitting of water. A catalyst is required to make the process
operate at feasible temperatures. The required energy can be either provided by nuclear
energy or by solar energy, or by hybrid systems including solar and nuclear energy. More
than 356 thermo-chemical cycles have been conceived which can be used for water
splitting. Around a dozen of these cycles such as the iron oxide cycle, cerium(IV) oxide-
cerium(III) oxide cycle, zinc-zinc oxide cycle, sulfur-iodine cycle, copper-chlorine cycle and
hybrid sulfur cycle are under research/in testing phase. The iodine-sulphur (I-S) cycle is one
of the most promising and efficient thermo-chemical water splitting technologies for the
mass production of hydrogen, on which BARC, Trombay, Mumbai is working.
1.5.27 The I-S closed loop glass system has been operated continuously for a period of 20
hours at hydrogen production rate of 30 Lph. India is the 5 th country to achieve I-S closed
loop operation in glass system, after USA (1980), Japan (2004), China (2010) and South
Korea (2009). USA aims to demonstrate commercial scale production of hydrogen using
nuclear energy by 2017. European Union started working in this direction in 2004 with the
objective to evaluate the potential of thermo-chemical processes, focusing on the I-S cycle
which is to be compared with the Westinghouse hybrid (HyS) cycle in view of the 2015
target for reduction of CO2 emissions from fossil fuels by more than 25% and 1.4 Hydrogen
is also produced as a by-product in chlor-alkali industries. There are around 40 such units in
India, which produced nearly 66000 tons of by-product hydrogen during 2013-14. Around
90% of this by-product hydrogen is utilized for captive and other uses. Only a fraction of this
hydrogen is currently used for energy purposes. Around 6600 tons of this hydrogen is still
unutilized.