Engineering xxx (2020) xxx-xxx

Research
Clean Power Technology—Review

Overview of Biomass Conversion to Electricity and Hydrogen and Recent

Developments in Low-Temperature Electrochemical Approaches
Wei Liu a,#, Congmin Liu b,#, Parikshit Gogoi c, Yulin Deng a,*
a School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering and RBI at Georgia Tech, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, 30332-0620,
USA
b National Institute of Clean-and-Low-Carbon Energy, Future Science City, Changping District, Beijing 102211, China
c Department of Chemistry, Nowgong College, Nagaon 782001, Assam, India

*Corresponding author.
E-mail: yulin.deng@rbi.gatech.edu (Y. Deng)
# These authors contributed equally to this work.

ARTICLE INFO
Article history:
Received 26 August 2019
Revised 8 January 2020
Accepted 27 February 2020
Available online

Keywords:
Biomass
Flow cell
Fuel cell
Hydrogen production
Electrolysis

ABSTRACT
Biomass is plant or animal material that stores both chemical and solar energies, and that is widely used for heat
production and various industrial processes. Biomass contains a large amount of the element hydrogen, so it is an
excellent source for hydrogen production. Therefore, biomass is a sustainable source for electricity or hydrogen
production. Although biomass power plants and reforming plants have been commercialized, it remains a difficult
challenge to develop more effective and economic technologies to further improve the conversion efficiency and reduce
the environmental impacts in the conversion process. The use of biomass-based flow fuel cell technology to directly
convert biomass to electricity and the use of electrolysis technology to convert biomass into hydrogen at a low
temperature are two new research areas that have recently attracted interest. This paper first briefly introduces traditional
technologies related to the conversion of biomass to electricity and hydrogen, and then reviews the new developments in
flow biomass fuel cells (FBFCs) and biomass electrolysis for hydrogen production (BEHP) in detail. Further challenges
in these areas are discussed.

2095-8099/© 2019 THE AUTHORS. Published by Elsevier LTD on behalf of Chinese Academy of Engineering and Higher Education
Press Limited Company. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-
nd/4.0/).