Review of Continuous Fermentative Hydrogen-Producing Bioreactors from Complex Wastewater

Abstract

In recent years, the production of hydrogen through dark fermentation has become increasingly popular because it is a sustainable approach to produce clean energy. Thus, an evaluation of studies reported on hydrogen production from different complex waste-waters will be of immense importance in economizing production technologies. This work presents a review of the advances in the bioreactor and bioprocess design for bio-hydrogen production from different complex wastewaters. The biohydrogen production is discussed emphasizing the production metabolic pathways, bioreactor configuration and operation, organic loading rate (OLR), pretreatment of wastewater, as well as microbial diversity. Also, in this review, various bioreactor configurations and performance parameters including H 2 yield (HY) and hydrogen production rate (HPR) are evaluated and presented. The work concludes with challenges and prospects of biohydrogen production and claims for more systematic and comprehensive studies on the subject.