Life cycle assessment of waste-to-biohydrogen systems

The hydrogen production industry led by traditional energy sources has the disadvantage of high energy consumption and high pollution. At a time when the resource and environmental protection problems are becoming more and more prominent, it is especially important for biohydrogen production to provide a healthy technological route for the development of the hydrogen production industry, which has the dual effects of resource utilization of waste and reduction of environmental pollution. This chapter mainly focuses on biohydrogen production and reviews the research progress in its life cycle evaluation. Firstly, the research process and ideas of life cycle evaluation are introduced, the current research status of life cycle evaluation of traditional hydrogen production technology and biohydrogen production technology is explained, and the relevant cases of life cycle evaluation of biohydrogen production are elaborated and analyzed, and on the aforementioned basis, the life cycle evaluation of biohydrogen production technology is summarized from the energy perspective and ecological perspective, respectively. Finally, it was concluded that the environmental assessment study of biohydrogen production from life cycle assessment (LCA) perspective shows that biohydrogen technology is superior to conventional hydrogen production technology and possibly to other renewable energy production pathways. The results of the LCA study can further help to identify improvement options for biohydrogen technology and also help policy-makers to make decisions on policies related to the promotion of biohydrogen production. While the LCA system for conventional hydrogen production technologies is more mature, the new biohydrogen production technologies have limited data source completeness and precision, and thus, many options for refining the various processes of LCA cannot be harmonized, and thus, some limitations remain.