The growth of environmental concerns and energy insecurity has led to an increasing interest on research for alternative sources of energy. In this context hydrogen holds a promising option as an energy carrier of the future. The common industrial methods for producing hydrogen like steam reformation or splitting water with electricity release carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases as by-products and hence do not qualify as alternative renewable energy sources in the current scenario.
In the scenario, where there is a worldwide collaborative effort to curb down emissions, attention is drawn towards microbial processes, that could lead to clean and renewable sources of hydrogen. Hydrogen production by using microbial strains traditionally targeted the cyanobacterial cultures and through biophotolysis. However, a review of more recently published works led the focus on fermentative approach of biohydrogen production, due to the dual benefits of energy production as well as waste reduction.
Microbial Biotechnology area of TERI in a recent corporate sponsored project attempts to explore and isolate microbial cultures that have biocatalysts which has high turnover rate and higher degree of oxygen tolerance and can efficiently produce hydrogen in a continuous manner. We are currently exploring are the dark fermentation mode. The sources of hydrogen producing microbes are targeted from river bed sediments, sewage, fruits and vegetable wastes and other industrial wastes. The initial screening strains indicted the capability of the selected strains to use various carbons sources and wastes to generate hydrogen. The up scaling of the process is currently under process.