Dark fermentation for H2 production from food waste and novel strategies for its enhancement

Hydrogen is an attractive energy vector that can be obtained through biological methods such as dark fermentation, allowing organic wastes to be used as substrates. This means an advantage compared to other methods since dark fermentation enables the revalori-zation of waste, such as food waste, with generation and disposal contributing to the current environmental issue. However, the complex composition of food waste and the microbial dynamics involved in dark fermentation have made it difficult to obtain maximum yields. Although several strategies have been evaluated to improve hydro-genogenic systems, the common limitations have been the economic costs and the re-emergence of unwanted microorganisms. Therefore, developing and evaluating novel strategies such as lactate-driven dark fermentation, bioaugmentation with native strains, metabolic engineering, and construction of synthetic microbiomes are innovative pro-posals to enhance H2 production from food waste.(c) 2022 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.