Biohydrogen production from anaerobic digestion of carbohydrate organic matter.

Hydrogen has received wide attention in the last decade as a clean energy vector. The major advantage of energy from hydrogen is the zero carbon emissions, since the utilization of hydrogen, either via combustion or via fuel cells, results in pure water. At industrial scale, steam reformation of methane is currently the major hydrogen producing process. However recently, increasing interest has been paid on biological production of hydrogen gas. Indeed, biohydrogen generation from renewable biomass would reduce dependence on fossil fuel, decrease the carbon dioxide emissions and produce usable bioenergy. Biological production of hydrogen using anaerobic bacteria is an exciting and promising new area of technology development that offers the potential production of usable hydrogen from a variety of renewable resources such as carbohydrates from agriculture or agro-food industries. This biological system is called dark fermentation and the most interesting bacteria strains are Clostridium sp. The investigations carried out at CWBI involve selection and characterization of bacteria strains, optimization of the biotechnological process and design of highly efficient bioreactors.