Life Cycle Assessment of biomass resources for hydrogen production

Energy demands are steadily increasing due to rising economy and industrial developments. There is a need to replace non-renewable fossil fuels with bio-based hydrogen. This article investigates various bio‑hydrogen production processes from 5 biomass resources: i) rice straw, ii) switchgrass, iii) sugarcane bagasse, iv) wheat straw, and v) corn stalk. Case studies of 12 bio‑hydrogen pathways were evaluated via LCA approach. The LCA impacts consist of Global Warming Potential (GWP), Acidification Potential (AP), Eutrophication Potential (EP), and Photochemical Ozone Creation Potential (POCP). The results demonstrated rice straw (RS) was the least favorable option utilized to produce 1 kg H₂ among all 12 options. Further comparisons were made concerning Energy demands, Water Footprint and Land Footprint. Normalization and Weighted scoring procedure were carried out. Among all 12 cases, the most favorable Normalized and Weighted impact scores were demonstrated by two cases (Impact scores of -7.61 and - 5.07) involving the gasification of switchgrass to produce hydrogen. A wide range of both carbon and water footprint results were displayed with the application of various bioprocesses for hydrogen generation. The wide range of results is due to the sets of varying environmental indicators applied for land and water use in LCA research areas. To further enhance the results, error analysis was also done for both energy requirements and water footprints.