A review on development of industrial processes and emerging techniques for production of hydrogen from renewable and sustainable sources

Hydrogen is considered as the fuel for next generation and extensive research is being pursued for search of new techniques for hydrogen production from renewable sources. There is a diverse collection of hydrogen production processes at their different stages of development. This review paper analyzes the industrial and emerging hydrogen production technologies. These processes include steam methane reformation, partial oxidation, autothermal reforming, steam iron, plasma reforming, thermochemical water splitting and biological processes. Till date, steam reformation of methane is the most used industrial technique and its efficiency can go up to 85%. It meets up to 50% of total hydrogen consumption in the world. Continuous research is going on to enhance production yield as well as to improve the process economics. Considerable work is going on about sorption enhanced reforming and membrane reactor for this purpose. Partial oxidation and autothermal reforming processes are the other two processes which are also used for industrial. The most sought process is the thermochemical water splitting using sunlight. Several research institutes are engaged in the development of hydrogen production technologies using renewable sources. Plasma reformation and biological processes are intensively worked out throughout the globe. The present article reviews the recent developments in industrial techniques which will lead to enhancement of hydrogen production. The non-conventional techniques are described in this article as emerging techniques, which are the promising approaches for hydrogen production from biomass, an abundant, clean and renewable source. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.