Biohydrogen : An

alternative against
conventional fuel
Mayuri Dutta
01016100416
Biomass for energy and chemicals (CT-424)
 Need for alternative fuel
• Population growth and changing lifestyle with industrialization and urbanization are the added sinks for soaring
energy demand. Present energy security is predominantly drifting around the fossil resources and alternative
fuels are being searched.
• However, the faster depletion of fossil resources and accelerated accumulation of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in
the environment that already has exceeded the “dangerously high” threshold of 450 ppm CO2, stressing the
fossil fuel to be an unsustainable source of energy. The conventional fossil-based fuels contributed major share
in the global primary energy consumption.
• The concerns related to energy security, environmental safety and sustainability have encouraged researchers
towards alternative, renewable, sustainable, efficient and cost effective energy sources with lesser emissions.
Renewable energy is not only providing the sustainable energy, but also considered as a tool to solve several
other problems associated with the fossil energy, viz., improving the energy security, resolving the health and
environmental anxiety, decreasing greenhouse gas emissions and reducing poverty by increasing employment.
• The increasing demand for biofuels has encouraged researchers and policy makers to find sustainable biofuel
production systems in accordance with regional conditions and needs. The sustainability of a biofuel production
system must include energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) saving along with environmental and social
acceptability.

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 Introduction to Biohydrogen
• The biohydrogen gas is the production of gas as an alternative source of energy for the usage
in our day-to-day life activities as a fuel from the biological sources such as feed stocks like
bioenergy crops and organic waste from processing of wood and agricultural wastes. The
matter used for the generation process are the renewable sources of energy by the action of
microbes. This technology has the potential to replace the fossil source of energy, which
release large amount of greenhouse gases, thus sustaining the power supply of the global
world.
• Present hydrogen production system is mainly based on electrolysis of water, and thermo-
catalytic reformation of hydrogen rich compounds, but these processes are energy intensive.
Biological hydrogen production can solve this problem by utilizing biomass and
microorganisms. Biohydrogen can be produced in two broad ways: By photosynthesis using
microalgae, and by fermentation.

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 Biohydrogen production processes

Schematic flowchart of biohydrogen Comparison of production rate of

production pathways biological H2 in different processes

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 Advantages of Biohydrogen over conventional fuels
• Hydrogen is considered environmental friendly, potentially clean and a renewable source of energy. Since 90%
of the hydrogen gas are produced from the fossil fuels the production strategies developed for H2 production
from biological feed stocks is a promising technology towards the conservation of the fossil fuels and generating
a fuel with low density and high heating value, which surely will be a potential fuel in the upcoming future. Since
the density of hydrogen and boiling point is quite low, there becomes a trouble in storing it however it is still
easier than storing of the electrical energy. The following table shows the comparison of heat of combustion low
heating value for different fuels.

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 Advantages of Biohydrogen over conventional fuels
• Hydrogen is one of the promising approach towards the pollution free fuel in the
environment that causes minimal pollution effect or no effect at all to the living organisms
in the surroundings in the environment. The burning of hydrogen releases no harmful
chemicals in the environment as that of the fossil fuels which releases large amount of
gases like oxides of C, N, S etc.
• This approach is the basis of hydrogen as a fuel in the environment conferring advantages
over fossil fuels. The production of hydrogen gas as a fuel is only clean with the attribution
of technologies required to produce it. If the production strategies involve produces H2
gas without any emission of greenhouse gases it will truly form the basis of a sustainable
form of energy.
• Therefore, the usage of this technology as a fuel could eventually help us to eliminate
greenhouse gases from the surroundings, which leads to environmental problems.

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 Challenges and future perspectives
• Though the biohydrogen production and its utilization seems to be an environmentally safe and feasible alternative for fossil based
fuel however, shifting from present fuel economy to biohydrogen economy is still in its infancy stage. Despite being several research
groups working on it, its industrial production, storage and transportation have not yet reached on a satisfactory level.
• Following are some of the technological challenges to achieve sustainable use of biohydrogen as a fuel :-
*Low Photochemical efficiency. *Efficiency of employed bacterial strain.
*Instability of hydrogenase over-expression *Sensitivity of hydrogenase to oxygen and feedback inhibition
*Competition for reductant from ferredoxin between *Suitability of low cost substrates
hydrogenases and other cellular functions. *Thermodynamic barrier.
*Industrially feasible production process and yield; *Kinetics suitable design of reactors.
*Substrate use competence of used strain. *Low cost material for hydrogen storage for economic feasibility.

• Although, present hydrogen production industries are based on chemical processing units, but the research trend on biohydrogen
production promises a booming potential of industrial biohydrogen production in the near future. Global utilization of confined and
trader hydrogen is projected to increase more than 300 billion cubic through 2018 with an annual growth rate of 3.5%. Recent global
research trends showed that the world’s largest hydrogen consumption will continue with US having the maximum share of growth,
although in 2018 it is likely to occur in China.
• Sustainable biohydrogen production can be generated in the future by exploration of the following technologies:
 Utilization of molecular tools for identification of robust hydrogen producing micro-organisms.
 Advancement in the bioreactor development.
 Fine tuning of pre-treatment techniques.
 Integration of other energy generation systems such as biogas, bioethanol, etc.

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 References
• Rathore, D., Singh, A., Dahiya, D., & Nigam, P. S. (2018). Sustainability of biohydrogen as
fuel: Present scenario and future perspective.
• Dubey, A. K., Milesh, L., & Datta, G. P. (2019). Bio-Hydrogen: An alternative as a
conventional approach to fossils.

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