Hydrogen economy and storage by nanoporous microalgae diatom : Special emphasis on designing photobioreactors

Storing multiple energy forms from microalgae is not only facile but also lowers the cost of culturing the microalgae. Among many microalgae, diatoms are microscopic glass menageries which are responsible for converting stored lipids and biomass into hydrogen, besides fixing 25% of global CO2. Besides this their silica frustules are also nature's naturally available bionanomaterials which have immense applications in nanotechnology for hydrogen production and other energy storage. The diatom frustules get hybridized with various chemical and biological components to generate or store hydrogen in various fuel cells. In laboratory these live diatoms can be allowed to culture in various designed solar panel photobioreactors better known as diatom solar panels for high and low value-added products essentially biofuel and fucoxanthin. The present review thus discusses about possible scope and approaches to produce hydrogen from live diatom and as well as from its biomass in specially designed photobioreactors. This truly has economic aspects of hydrogen production from diatoms in comparison to other microalgae which needs to be explored for its wide applications due to its robustness and abundance occurrence.

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