Renewable biohydrogen production from straw biomass-Recent advances in pretreatment/hydrolysis technologies and future development

Straw is an abundant natural bioresource, especially in developing and agricultural countries. Bio-hydrogen production from this renewable biomass through biological methods is an active research area. Because of its distinctive characteristic of being rich in cellulose, straw has been extensively considered as a promising raw material for clean energy production. In this paper, the recent progress of bio-hydrogen production from straw was reviewed with the emphasis on the advances in pretreatment and hydrolysis technologies. The future development of straw-based biohydrogen production was also analyzed. Based on the physicochemical properties of straw biomass and mechanisms of bio-hydrogen fermentation, various pretreatment procedures have been developed to make the straw substrate more available for hydrogen-producing bacteria to realize large- scale bio-hydrogen production from straw. This review summarized the recent technolo-gies of straw pretreatment and hydrolysis as well as elaborated on the bottlenecks in the field of straw biotransformation in great detail. Furthermore, based on the current tech-nology status and potential, the challenges, prospects and future directions of the pro-duction methods were further proposed. (c) 2021 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.