Potential of hydrogen production from wastewater in Iran: Best available technology and capacity of hydrogen plant

The increasing energy need, depletion of fossil fuels along with its greenhouse gas emissions, forced the related communities to work on alternative resources.Hydrogen is one the most promising alternatives which doesn’t exist freely in nature and bio resource. In fact, hydrogen has been identified as one of the majorclean energy sources of the future due to its high energy content (122 kJ.g-1) and reduce greenhouse gas emissions as compared to fossil fuels. A wide variety ofprocesses are available for H2 production which according to the raw materials used could be divided into two major categories namely, conventional and renewable technologies. The methods which produce hydrogen from renewableresources can be divided into two feedstocks: biomass and water. The first class is subdivided into two subcategories namely, thermochemical and biologicalprocesses. Significant resources of domestic and industrial wastewaters in Iran, has attracted attention to produce renewable hydrogen. According to statistics,domestic and industrial wastewaters in Iran, are 10,640,000 m3/day and 2189041.096 m3/day, respectively. In this study, the potential of bio-hydrogenproduction in Iran has been investigated by three methods including Dark fermentation (DF), Photo-fermentation (PF) and Microbial electrolysis cell (MEC).The results show that, the largest volume of hydrogen production from the various industries is found in sugar factory and dairy industries (3251.17 Kg/day and 2253.058, respectively). Also, in the case of domestic wastewater, MEC method has indicated the best performance (14348.04 Kg/day).

Keywords:

Hydrogen production , Wastewater , Dark fermentation , Photofermentation , Microbial electrolysis cell