A review on critical assessment of advanced bioreactor options for sustainable hydrogen production

The utilization of fossil fuels causes adverse effects on the human and environment and the world is facing the depletion of these resources. The conventional technologies available for hydrogen production create greenhouse gases which cause a serious threat to the surroundings. Hence, there is a need to create a renewable and alternative technique for hydrogen production. The biological method acts as renewable technology to conventional technologies. For the present and future generations, the development of bioreactors may provide a sustainable route to meet cleaner hydrogen production. The conventional methods like reforming process, gasification process, thermochemical method, water electrolysis and photoelectrochemical method are not sustainable which emits toxic gases and requires a large amount of energy but in the application of bioreactors the cleaner fuel can be obtained and wastewater can be treated efficiently. The objectives of this review are to estimate the efficiency of reactors involving dark fermentation reactors (suspended and attached growth reactors), photobioreactors (tubular and flat plate reactors) and microbial electrolysis cell bioreactors along with their recent advancements in hydrogen production. This article also highlighted the comprehensive review about the substrate utilization, waste treatment, the principle of reactor process and recent process developments. Although several methods are available for hydrogen production, important and innovative discoveries and process configurations in pilot-scale are needed to estimate the potential of each bioreactor to provide sustainable and cleaner fuel production. Through this review, the present status of bioreactors in hydrogen production and their scale-up opportunities can be determined. (C) 2020 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.