Promoting dark fermentation for biohydrogen production: Potential roles of iron-based additives

Dark fermentation (DF) is a promising technology for biohydrogen production. Low efficiency of biohydrogen production is a bottleneck of the scale-up prospects for DF. Additives have been extensively studied to improve the biohydrogen production efficiency. Among of them, iron-based additives present a promising application potential due to their demonstrated significant enhancement of DF efficiency and among the low-cost bioactive agents. However, current reviews mainly examined the effects of nano-materials on DF and an in-depth analysis of enhancing mechanisms with addition of iron-based additives in DF is still lacking. To this end, this article comprehensively reviewed and evaluated the effects of iron-based additives on DF. Further, the potential mechanisms, including altering metabolic pathways, improving activities of microbes and enzymes, promoting electron delivery, and enriching hydrogen-producing bacteria, were discussed. Lastly, prospects and challenges of iron-based additives for subsequent research and large-scale application for DF were summarized.