Bio-Hydrogen: Technology Developments in Microbial Fuel Cells and Their Future Prospects

Abstract

The energy is the part of the human evolution; the innovation in the transportation and industrial evolution happened in this century made mankind to depend on fossil fuels invariably. The depletion of fossil fuel resources and global carbon footprint accumulation are worrying the global countries for the future environmental safety. The clear policies were amended to come out of releasing the global carbon footprint by many countries; even developing countries are making it compulsory for controlling or reducing greenhouse gases releasing in to environment. In this context hydrogen fuel is getting promising significance since it has high energy content per unit mass, and up on combustion it will not release any carbon footprint and considered to be complete green energy. Though there are many chemical and physicochemical methods available for the production of H2, biological H2 production will be superior since this method do not use harsh chemical process and do not need extreme conditions for the production. Hence, many research studies are put forward for the production of biological hydrogen production. In this book chapter we will have comprehensive discussion on these technologies developed for the hydrogen production till date. This chapter also included the next generation technologies which are in acceleration in engineering the strains for the enhancing the productivity and various other parameters like utilization of waste biomass and waste industrial affluent etc. This chapter also included with the list of aspects to be looked for the future development of H2 as the next generation fuel energy.