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Biological hydrogen production from organic wastewater by dark fermentation in China: Overview and prospects

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Abstract

Biological hydrogen production by dark fermentation is an important part of biological hydrogen production technologies. China is a typical developing country that heavily relies on fossil fuels; thus, new, clean, and sustainable energy development turns quite urgent. It is delightful that Chinese government has already drawn up several H2 development policies since 1990s and provided financial aid to launch some H2 development projects. In this paper, the research status on dark fermentative hydrogen production in China was summarized and analyzed. Subsequently, several new findings and achievements, with some of which transformed into scale-up tests, were highlighted. Moreover, some prospecting coupling processes with dark fermentation of hydrogen production were also proposed to attract more research interests in the future.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Urban Water Resources and Environments (SKLUWRE), Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, 150090, China

    Nanqi Ren, Wanqian Guo, Bingfeng Liu, Guangli Cao & Jing Tang

Authors
  1. Nanqi Ren
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  2. Wanqian Guo
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  3. Bingfeng Liu
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  4. Guangli Cao
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  5. Jing Tang
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Correspondence to Nanqi Ren.

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Dr. Nanqi Ren is a National Distinguished Young Scholar of China, Chang-Jiang Scholars Professor, and Head of State Key Laboratory of Urban Water Resource and Environment, Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT). He focuses on environmental biotechnology, bio-energy technology of H2, CH4, and electricity, biological processes of wastewater treatment, and POPs in water, air, and soil. He invented a technology of biohydrogen production from ethanol fermentation, found a novel genus of hydrogen-producing bacteria (Ethanoligenens), and established a full-scale biohydrogen production plant. He got two times of National Second-Place Award by China, published more than 300 papers and 9 books, and held more than 20 patents.

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Ren, N., Guo, W., Liu, B. et al. Biological hydrogen production from organic wastewater by dark fermentation in China: Overview and prospects. Front. Environ. Sci. Eng. China 3, 375–379 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11783-009-0148-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11783-009-0148-7

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