The production of biofuels from syngas (composed mostly of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and hydrogen) is an emerging technology that can utilize a wide variety of biomass resources. It involves first converting biomass to syngas via a process called gasification. The syngas can then be converted to other products, such as hydrogen, using either a metal catalyst or microbial technologies.
Today, hydrogen is produced commercially from fossil fuel-derived syngas (mostly natural gas or coal) using metal catalysts and is used to produce other chemicals rather than as a transportation fuel. Research is ongoing to develop hydrogen as a transportation fuel, to use biomass rather than fossil fuel feedstocks, and to use microorganisms rather than metal catalysts to convert the syngas to hydrogen.
The syngas can be generated from a wide variety of biomass materials (e.g., prairie grasses, wood chips, solid municipal wastes, paper wastes, softwood trees) and uses the entire biomass feedstock which increases the conversion efficiency.
Several types of microorganisms are capable of consuming syngas as part of their metabolism and producing hydrogen.
Microbial production of hydrogen from syngas can occur at relatively low pressures and temperatures (compared with metal catalysts), but the process needs to be improved for commercial production.