Recent advances in biohydrogen research

A fundamental and principal difficulty of the future energy supply is that the formation of fossil fuels is much slower than the rate of their exploit ation. Therefore the reserves which can be recovered in an energetically fe asible manner are shrinking parallel with an increasing world-wide energy d emand. Among the alternative energy carriers, hydrogen is preferred because it is easy to transport and store and it burns to environmentally friendly water vapour when utilized. Hydrogen can be produced in biological systems , however, our understanding of the molecular details is just emerging.