Hydrogen production: Two stage processes for waste degradation

The dark fermentation process generates hydrogen by biological means. It presents two main advantages: fulfilling requirements for mild operational conditions and gaining benefit from the residual biomass. The process itself may be seen as a pre-treatment step in a complete stabilisation chain, with the aim of attaining the valorisation of residual biomass. However, increasing the yield of H2 production is an imperative task. In this manuscript, a review of recent work in the field of fermentative hydrogen production is presented. As dark fermentation has a maximum yield of 33% (on sugars), a description is also presented of possible second stage processes for the degradation of dark fermentation effluents. Alternatives considered were photofermentation and bioelectrochemical systems (BES) as processes capable of converting fermentation sub-products into H2. Anaerobic digestion as a final stabilisation stage was also considered owing to the wide application of this technology in the treatment of bio-wastes.