Biohydrogen economy: Challenges and prospects for commercialization

Abstract

Biohydrogen has several properties that project it as a potential alternative to our largely used fossil fuels. However, its production technology must overcome a number of limitations before it could successfully compete in the fuel market and be deployed on a large scale. Although the potential of microbes to produce biohydrogen has raised a lot of excitement, yet a lot needs to be done on technical, economical, policy making, and legislative fronts to make it replace the existing fossil fuels. Review of published literature suggests that the biohydrogen production system holds great promise for industrial application. In this chapter, we have attempted to elucidate the major challenges being faced for using biohydrogen on a commercial scale by making an assessment of its economics taking into account the different processes like production, storage, transportation, and delivery to the user and also assess its future commercialization perspectives.