Comparative environmental life cycle assessment of biohydrogen production from biomass resources

The goal of this chapter is to assess environmental impacts of biohydrogen production regarding anthropogenic climate change, emissions with an acidification impact and further impact categories by means of a life cycle approach. In conjunction with reducing the use of fossil resources, there is a need to prioritize those technologies that will provide the least impact on the environment. Thus, a variety of processes of hydrogen production derived from biomass feedstock are investigated related to environmental effects. This case study considers biohydrogen production derived from biomass sources from forestry and short rotation coppice (SRC), herbaceous biomass (i.e. wheat straw), energy crops (mainly maize and grain) and biowaste in Germany. The technology with the most promising results regarding the environmental impact is steam methane reforming (SMR) of a substrate mix from nonfood substrates compared to steam methane reforming of natural gas.