Review Article
A state of the art review on biomass processing and conversion technologies to produce hydrogen and its recovery via membrane separation

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2020.04.009Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Thermochemical conversion technologies for hydrogen production.

  • Gasification technologies review for hydrogen production.

  • Biological routes for hydrogen production.

  • Potential of membrane applications for hydrogen separation from syngas.

  • Prospective of hydrogen as future of energy.

Abstract

Hydrogen is a zero-emission green fuel containing sufficient energy potentially suitable for electricity generation. Currently, large quantities of hydrogen are produced using classical fossil fuels. Nevertheless, the finite quantities of these resources have compelled the global community to look into using more sustainable and environmentally friendly resources such as bio-based waste. There are several approaches, to convert biomass to hydrogen, among which the thermochemical and biological processes are considered as the most important ones. The aim of this review paper is twofold, namely, (a) to evaluate hydrogen production and biomass processing methods to give a better insight into their potential merits and identify gaps for sustainable hydrogen generation, and (b) to evaluate current and future opportunities in membrane technology for hydrogen separation and purification from biomass processing. By fulfilling these gaps, the objectives of economical, sustainable, and environmentally-friendly resources for hydrogen production and separation can be recommended.

Introduction

Hydrogen is ever-growing in its demand over other conventional fuels due to its wide range of diverse applications [1,2]. Its high energy content offers a comprehensive benefit [3], in terms of lower heating value (LHV)/kg over their fossil fuel-based counterparts such as methane and gasoline, which are 2.4 and 2.8 times higher respectively [4]. Furthermore, hydrogen is extensively used in fuel cells, which have minimal emissions and merely release water-vapor as the net emissions and might be regarded as zero-emission green fuel [5,6]. On the other hand, fossil fuels have contributed to global warming by supplementing the CO2release with additional SOx and NOx into the environment [7]. Additionally, hydrogen is a principal component of many chemical and fuel products such as ammonia, methane, urea, ethanol, etc [8,9]. Due to these reasons, further research in the domain of hydrogen production is necessary so that future technology will meet these requirements [10]. Moreover, the hydrogen is useful in fuel cell applications and many integrated processes have been investigated for hydrogen production processes with fuel cells [[11], [12], [13]].

The hydrogen economy is known as a system in which hydrogen is used as a prime energy source and becomes a key component of future power generation [14]. Many countries have started to determine the value of the hydrogen economy and make efforts to take significant steps towards a hydrogen economy and planned the polices and methods as reviews by many researchers, such as, for Malaysia [15], Pakistan [16], Taiwan [17], China [18], Portugal [19], and Canada [20], etc. The value of the hydrogen economy was 107 billion $ in 2016 [21], 115.25 billion $ in 2017 and is expected to rise to 154.74 billion $ by 2022 [10]. In a recent research report, world hydrogen demand has been reported as 50 million metric tons/year or 45 billion kg/year in 2006 and has been increasing at the rate of 10% annually [11]. Currently the worldwide cumulative hydrogen consumption is in the range 400–500 million Nm3 per annum [12,13] and will continue beyond 2025 [14]. It is anticipated that in the near future hydrogen will be the most important energy carrying fuel for the reasons that it is environmentally friendly and possesses efficient burning characteristics [15,16]. Additionally, hydrogen is used as a major constituent in the synthesis of ammonia and methanol for many decades, which is conventionally obtained from the methane-steam reforming reaction [17,22].

Hydrogen is obtained from both fossil and non-fossil fuels and about 96% of the total hydrogen produced is obtained from carbonaceous raw materials, which are comprised mainly fossil fuels [21]. The continuing supply of fuel is under threat due to the finite sources of fossil fuels, hence the world must divert its dependence from fossil to non-fossil renewable sources [23,24]. Reforming and pyrolysis are the major processes to produce hydrogen from fossil fuels [3,25]. On the other hand, it can be produced using non-fossil fuel either by thermochemical or biological methods [26]. Among the non-fossil fuels, biomass is an abundant renewable source of energy that is available in many forms such as; agricultural, forest, and biowastes, etc. Biomass has been utilized in many ways for energy production for centuries and it is still contributing about 10–14% of the total energy supply of the world, whereas, for the developed countries, this share is substantially higher, i.e., 40–45% [27,28]. Biomass may be processed in numerous ways depending on the end-use and required products, which are obtained through chemical, thermal, thermochemical and biochemical pathways [25,29]. The resultant amount of hydrogen from biomass may reach 20% by volume via different conversion strategies [30,31].

Biomass processing routes, in principle, depend on the state of the available feedstock [32]. Hydrogen from bioresources can be produced using gasification, pyrolysis, fermentation, anaerobic digestion or even the steam reforming process [33]. A scheme of the different routes from biomass to hydrogen is shown in Fig. 1. The quantity of hydrogen produced depends on the source of biomass and the efficiency of the process method/route utilized [34]. The technologies, to convert biomass into hydrogen, are useful and acceptable as compared to other typical technologies incorporating fossil fuels due to less and/or zero emissions into the environment [27,35].

Several reviews have been published over time to study the developments in the area of hydrogen production. A detailed analysis of these review papers published for hydrogen production from biomass using thermochemical or biological conversion technologies is shown in Table 1, which also indicates how these insightful reviews have served to this domain of knowledge especially in the case of the separation of hydrogen through membrane technology. Most of these reviews are based on a single technology for hydrogen production. No review paper has been found which compares all available technologies for hydrogen production. Singh et al. [36] discussed hydrogen production through both direct and indirect bio-photolysis processes with the effect of catalysts. The most important reviews covering biological methods were presented by Mudhoo et al. [37] and Anoop et al. [38]. The hydrogen production processes by thermochemical based techniques have been reviewed and are available for pyrolysis and gasification [25,39,40]. A review was published in 2009, which gives a very brief review of the thermochemical and biological conversion processes for hydrogen production, as most of the technologies were at the initial stages of development [25]. Most of the literature studies available are for gasification processes such as steam gasification, supercritical water gasification, solar gasification, etc [[41], [42], [43], [44]]. Based on the extensive literature reviews, there has not been a critical discussion, assessment, and comparison of the operating principles. Also, the costs relating to H2 production for most processes are missing in the literature. The major contribution of this review paper lies in providing an in-depth analysis of hydrogen production and biomass processing methods for relevant advantages and shortcomings for a sustainable energy future. Furthermore, the usefulness of membrane technology for hydrogen separation and purification specifically obtained via biomass processing are included as a key highlight, followed by the future potential in this area of research. Within this context, the remainder of this review is categorized as follows. In section Thermochemical methods, a literature survey on thermochemical methods is presented which will assist researchers and the scientific community to select the suitable process according to type of biomass and applications. Section Non-Thermal/biological methods addresses the non-thermal/biological methods of hydrogen production and its usage. The separation of hydrogen via membranes through biomass based processes is reviewed in Section Implementation of membrane for biomass-based Hydrogen Separation. The next section discusses the challenges to continue the way forward to sustainable hydrogen production.

Section snippets

Thermochemical methods

Thermochemical processes are typically considered as viable and effective to produce hydrogen from biomass [23,35,48], whereas, these processes have many challenges in terms of commercialization [49]. These technologies mainly include pyrolysis [50], gasification [51], combustion [52] and liquefaction [53]. Fig. 1 also shows the schematic diagram for pathways of biomass thermochemical technologies with subsequent downstream processes for hydrogen production and purification using membrane

Non-thermal/biological methods

Hydrogen production from biological conversion of biomass is another important element of future bio-refinery systems. The production of hydrogen using biological methods was discussed by Levin et al. [212] and it gained prominence in the mid of 1970's when the oil crises shook the world economy. During that decade, many biological processes were developed and employed for hydrogen production. These processes are able to produce the hydrogen to meet the increasing demand for hydrogen and

Implementation of membrane for biomass-based hydrogen separation

Membrane, absorption, adsorption such as pressure swing adsorption (PSA), temperature swing adsorption (TSA), electrical swing adsorption (ESA) and cryogenic technologies are often used at an industrial scale for the separation and purification of hydrogen produced from biomass [[266], [267], [268], [269]]. Although the above-mentioned technologies are commercialized, but they are facing many issues of cost and energy-intensive performance. Membrane separation is a very good, important and

Research development and future direction

In this section, the research gaps, current challenges, and future research direction of biomass processing methods as well as for the separation of hydrogen using membranes are discussed.

Conclusions

This study reviewed the biomass processing and conversion technologies for hydrogen production. Biomass is typically converted to hydrogen via two main routes, either thermochemical or biological. The thermochemical route is credible via combustion, pyrolysis, and liquefaction, catalytic steam reforming of raw gases, gasification, supercritical water gasification, and solar gasification. The merits and demerits, process parameters, types and routes of all processes have been critically

Acknowledgment

Authors would like to acknowledge Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Doha, Qatar for the technical and financial facilitation of this study.

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