Food waste is one of the most severe environmental problems all over the world. Over a billion tones of food waste is generated per year which accounts for 33% of annual global food production.Therefore, disposal and utilization of food waste is becoming to be one of the major global challenges. Food waste consists mainly of starch and protein which make food waste to be an economical source for biofuels production.Utilization of food waste for hydrogen
production could not only solve the food waste problem, but also produce the alternative energy source simultaneously.However, nutrients stored in food waste are in the form of macromolecules which have to be broken into utilizable forms (glucose and free amino nitrogen) before utilized by microorganisms for fermentative hydrogen production. Although some reported pretreatments were able to convert the macromolecules into utilizable forms, various inhibitory products
(such as furfural) for fermentative hydrogen production could also be produced.Enzymatic hydrolysis could release the nutrients (glucose and free amino nitrogen) from food waste with advantage of high hydrolysis speed which would be a promising way. However, there is little
information about fermentative hydrogen production from enzymatic hydrolysis of food waste.