生物学的水素製造技術の開発動向と可能性

抄録

‘BioHydrogen’, the production of H₂ by biological system, has been a massive stage of basic and applied R&D in the world. Even NEDO has begun to a funding to this research area again from end of last fiscal year. Also, the International Energy Agency (IEA)-Hydrogen Implementing Agreement (HIA) supported the BioHydrogen field and IEA-HIA approved Annex 21 (Biohydrogen) in 7/Oct./2005 to 5 years. Dark (Fermentative) H2 production from waste and unused biomass has to be considered because this H2 production method is, near future, first bridge to the actual use. Realization of practical processes for photo-biological H2 production from water and organic wastewater using solar energy would result in a major. Finally, the social acceptance of BioHydrogen should be put on emphasis as a new research field. As the rise of energy prices, new energy like BioHydrogen came up to the stage of realistic method. We have to evaluate the feasibility of the technology taking every factor into consideration.