Biohydrogen

Biohydrogen is defined as hydrogen produced biologically, most commonly by algae, bacteria and archaea. Biohydrogen is a potential biofuel obtainable from both cultivation and from waste organic materials.

Currently, there is a huge demand for hydrogen. There is no log of the production volume and use of hydrogen worldwide; however, consumption of hydrogen was estimated to have reached 900 billion cubic meters in 2011.

Refineries are large-volume producers and consumers of hydrogen. Today 96% of all hydrogen is derived from fossil fuels, with 48% from natural gas, 30% from hydrocarbons, 18% from coal, and about 4% from electrolysis. Oil-sands processing, gas-to-liquids and coal gasification projects require a huge amount of hydrogen and are expected to increase the demand for hydrogen significantly within the next few years. Environmental regulations implemented in most countries increase the hydrogen requirement at refineries for gas-line and diesel desulfurization.

An important future application of hydrogen could be as an alternative for fossil fuels before the oil deposits are depleted. This application is however dependent on the development of storage techniques to enable proper storage, distribution and combustion of hydrogen. If the cost of hydrogen production, distribution, and end-user technologies decreases, hydrogen as a fuel could be entering the market by 2020.

On a mass basis, hydrogen has the highest energy content in comparison with all common fuels. Although there are several challenges for hydrogen storage and transportation, it is considered as a fuel of the future. It burns cleanly and water is its only byproduct; however, the environmental impacts of this fuel should be evaluated by a well-to-wheel analysis which covers all the steps in production and use of the fuel from the raw material production, transportation and storage, and fuel production, transportation, storage and distribution to the end use.

Industrial fermentation of hydrogen, or whole-cell catalysis, requires a limited amount of energy, since fission of water is achieved with whole cell catalysis, to lower the activation energy. This allows hydrogen to be produced from any organic material that can be derived through whole cell catalysis since this process does not depend on the energy of substrate.

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