Livermore and UC Santa Cruz Develop Carbon Sequestration Technique In Lab Which Helps De-Acidify Ocean Water

Lawrence Livermore scientists have discovered and demonstrated a new technique to remove and store atmospheric carbon dioxide while generating carbon-negative hydrogen and producing alkalinity, which can be used to offset ocean acidification.

The team demonstrated, at a laboratory scale, a system that uses the acidity normally produced in saline water electrolysis to accelerate silicate mineral dissolution while producing hydrogen fuel and other gases. The resulting electrolyte solution was shown to be significantly elevated in hydroxide concentration that in turn proved strongly absorptive and retentive of atmospheric CO2.

Further, the researchers suggest that the carbonate and bicarbonate produced in the process could be used to mitigate ongoing ocean acidification, similar to how an Alka Seltzer neutralizes excess acid in the stomach.

"We not only found a way to remove and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere while producing valuable H2, we also suggest that we can help save marine ecosystems with this new technique," said Greg Rau, an LLNL visiting scientist, senior scientist at UC Santa Cruz and lead author of a paper appearing this week (May 27) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

When carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere, a significant fraction is passively taken up by the ocean forming carbonic acid that makes the ocean more acidic. This acidification has been shown to be harmful to many species of marine life, especially corals and shellfish. By the middle of this century, the globe will likely warm by at least 2 degrees Celsius and the oceans will experience a more than 60 percent increase in acidity relative to pre-industrial levels. The alkaline solution generated by the new process could be added to the ocean to help neutralize this acid and help offset its effects on marine biota. However, further research is needed, the authors said.

"When powered by renewable electricity and consuming globally abundant minerals and saline solutions, such systems at scale might provide a relatively efficient, high-capacity means to consume and store excess atmospheric CO2 as environmentally beneficial seawater bicarbonate or carbonate," Rau said. "But the process also would produce a carbon-negative 'super green' fuel or chemical feedstock in the form of hydrogen."

Most previously described chemical methods of atmospheric carbon dioxide capture and storage are costly, using thermal/mechanical procedures to concentrate molecular CO2 from the air while recycling reagents, a process that is cumbersome, inefficient and expensive.

"Our process avoids most of these issues by not requiring CO2 to be concentrated from air and stored in a molecular form, pointing the way to more cost-effective, environmentally beneficial, and safer air CO2 management with added benefits of renewable hydrogen fuel production and ocean alkalinity addition," Rau said.

Interesting.  Will it scale and deal with real world scenarios?  It almost sounds too good to be true...

Artificial Photosynthesis Created at Berkeley Lab

SEM images of Si (top) and TiO2 (bottom) nanowire electrodes show light being absorbed and generating a photocurrent that can carry out the water-splitting reaction.

In the wake of the sobering news that atmospheric carbon dioxide is now at its highest level in at least three million years, an important advance in the race to develop carbon-neutral renewable energy sources has been achieved. Scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have reported the first fully integrated nanosystem for artificial photosynthesis. While "artificial leaf" is the popular term for such a system, the key to this success was an "artificial forest."

"Similar to the chloroplasts in green plants that carry out photosynthesis, our artificial photosynthetic system is composed of two semiconductor light absorbers, an interfacial layer for charge transport, and spatially separated co-catalysts," says Peidong Yang, a chemist with Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division, who led this research. "To facilitate solar water- splitting in our system, we synthesized tree-like nanowire heterostructures, consisting of silicon trunks and titanium oxide branches. Visually, arrays of these nanostructures very much resemble an artificial forest."

Yang, who also holds appointments with the University of California Berkeley's Chemistry Department and Department of Materials Science and Engineering, is the corresponding author of a paper describing this research in the journal NANO Letters. The paper is titled "A Fully Integrated Nanosystem of Semiconductor Nanowires for Direct Solar Water Splitting." Co-authors are Chong Liu, Jinyao Tang, Hao Ming Chen and Bin Liu.

Solar technologies are the ideal solutions for carbon-neutral renewable energy – there's enough energy in one hour's worth of global sunlight to meet all human needs for a year. Artificial photosynthesis, in which solar energy is directly converted into chemical fuels, is regarded as one of the most promising of solar technologies. A major challenge for artificial photosynthesis is to produce hydrogen cheaply enough to compete with fossil fuels. Meeting this challenge requires an integrated system that can efficiently absorb sunlight and produce charge-carriers to drive separate water reduction and oxidation half-reactions.

"In natural photosynthesis the energy of absorbed sunlight produces energized charge-carriers that execute chemical reactions in separate regions of the chloroplast," Yang says. "We've integrated our nanowire nanoscale heterostructure into a functional system that mimics the integration in chloroplasts and provides a conceptual blueprint for better solar-to-fuel conversion efficiencies in the future."

When sunlight is absorbed by pigment molecules in a chloroplast, an energized electron is generated that moves from molecule to molecule through a transport chain until ultimately it drives the conversion of carbon dioxide into carbohydrate sugars. This electron transport chain is called a "Z-scheme" because the pattern of movement resembles the letter Z on its side. Yang and his colleagues also use a Z-scheme in their system only they deploy two Earth abundant and stable semiconductors – silicon and titanium oxide - loaded with co-catalysts and with an ohmic contact inserted between them. Silicon was used for the hydrogen-generating photocathode and titanium oxide for the oxygen-generating photoanode. The tree-like architecture was used to maximize the system's performance. Like trees in a real forest, the dense arrays of artificial nanowire trees suppress sunlight reflection and provide more surface area for fuel producing reactions.

"Upon illumination photo-excited electron−hole pairs are generated in silicon and titanium oxide, which absorb different regions of the solar spectrum," Yang says. "The photo-generated electrons in the silicon nanowires migrate to the surface and reduce protons to generate hydrogen while the photo-generated holes in the titanium oxide nanowires oxidize water to evolve oxygen molecules. The majority charge carriers from both semiconductors recombine at the ohmic contact, completing the relay of the Z-scheme, similar to that of natural photosynthesis."

Biohydrogen Breakthrough? Using Xytose to Produce Hydrogen

A team of Virginia Tech researchers has discovered a way to extract large quantities of hydrogen from any plant, a breakthrough that has the potential to bring a low-cost, environmentally friendly fuel source to the world.

“Our new process could help end our dependence on fossil fuels,” said Y.H. Percival Zhang, an associate professor of biological systems engineering in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the College of Engineering “Hydrogen is one of the most important biofuels of the future.”

Zhang and his team have succeeded in using xylose, the most abundant simple plant sugar, to produce a large quantity of hydrogen that previously was attainable only in theory. Zhang’s method can be performed using any source of biomass.

The discovery is a featured editor’s choice in an online version of the chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie, International Edition.

[...]

Obstacles to commercial production of hydrogen gas from biomass previously included the high cost of the processes used and the relatively low quantity of the end product.

But Zhang thinks he has found the answers to those problems.

For seven years, Zhang’s team has been focused on finding non-traditional ways to produce high-yield hydrogen at low cost, specifically researching enzyme combinations, discovering novel enzymes, and engineering enzymes with desirable properties.

The team liberates the high-purity hydrogen under mild reaction conditions at 122 degree Fahrenheit and normal atmospheric pressure. The biocatalysts used to release the hydrogen are a group of enzymes artificially isolated from different microorganisms that thrive at extreme temperatures, some of which could grow at around the boiling point of water.

The researchers chose to use xylose, which comprises as much as 30 percent of plant cell walls. Despite its abundance, the use of xylose for releasing hydrogen has been limited. The natural or engineered microorganisms that most scientists use in their experiments cannot produce hydrogen in high yield because these microorganisms grow and reproduce instead of splitting water molecules to yield pure hydrogen.

To liberate the hydrogen, Virginia Tech scientists separated a number of enzymes from their native microorganisms to create a customized enzyme cocktail that does not occur in nature. The enzymes, when combined with xylose and a polyphosphate, liberate the unprecedentedly high volume of hydrogen from xylose, resulting in the production of about three times as much hydrogen as other hydrogen-producing microorganisms.

The energy stored in xylose splits water molecules, yielding high-purity hydrogen that can be directly utilized by proton-exchange membrane fuel cells. Even more appealing, this reaction occurs at low temperatures, generating hydrogen energy that is greater than the chemical energy stored in xylose and the polyphosphate. This results in an energy efficiency of more than 100 percent — a net energy gain. That means that low-temperature waste heat can be used to produce high-quality chemical energy hydrogen for the first time. Other processes that convert sugar into biofuels such as ethanol and butanol always have energy efficiencies of less than 100 percent, resulting in an energy penalty.

I haven't found the paper in the journal...help?

Lab Scientists Discover Inexpensive Catalyst for H2 Production

Hydrogen would command a key role in future renewable energy technologies, experts agree, if a relatively cheap, efficient and carbon-neutral means of producing it can be developed. An important step towards this elusive goal has been taken by a team of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California, Berkeley. The team has discovered an inexpensive metal catalyst that can effectively generate hydrogen gas from water.

"Our new proton reduction catalyst is based on a molybdenum-oxo metal complex that is about 70 times cheaper than platinum, today's most widely used metal catalyst for splitting the water molecule," said Hemamala Karunadasa, one of the co-discoverers of this complex. "In addition, our catalyst does not require organic additives, and can operate in neutral water, even if it is dirty, and can operate in sea water, the most abundant source of hydrogen on earth and a natural electrolyte. These qualities make our catalyst ideal for renewable energy and sustainable chemistry."

Karunadasa holds joint appointments with Berkeley Lab's Chemical Sciences Division and UC Berkeley's Chemistry Department. She is the lead author of a paper describing this work that appears in the April 29, 2010 issue of the journal Nature, titled "A molecular molybdenum-oxo catalyst for generating hydrogen from water." Co-authors of this paper were Christopher Chang and Jeffrey Long, who also hold joint appointments with Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley.

No time...

I wonder how much this effects the energy requirements though for its production.

Chu, Congress at Loggerheads Over H2 Cars

Energy Secretary Steven Chu wants to kill research and development on cars that run on hydrogen fuel cells, but a spending bill approved by the House this month and another scheduled for a Senate vote this week would restore funding for the program.

Mr. Chu has said that hydrogen fuel cells are an impractical technology for vehicles, partly because they would require the creation of a network of hydrogen fueling stations.

A Nobel-Prize winning physicist and former director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which conducts federal energy research, Mr. Chu argues that improved internal-combustion engines and plug-in electric vehicles are more realistic technologies for cutting oil consumption over the next 20 to 30 years.

This is another time that I am in disagreement with Dr Chu.

It wouldn't be as hard to work this out. There are already hydrogen generators using natural gas. It wouldn't be as large a leap once these are in place to start putting in storage and whatnot. It's not a trivial thing, but successful transitions do take place.

Cars I Want

Noel over at The Power and the Money went to a car show recently. He talked about the vehicles he wants or liked based on what he saw there. He then asked what cars we'd like. Well, garsh, since we're going to be in the market in the next six months for a vehicle replacement (originally planned to replace my jeep, but instead will be replacing the PT Cruiser).

In all probability we will end up buying a hybrid SUV of some kind. It'll depend on what we enjoy driving when we test drive. Feeling mildly patriotic, I'd lean towards a Ford Escape:

Our goal here is that it must move at least 5 people. It must get better than 30 mpg. We would prefer 4WD/AWD: while generally unnecessary in the Bay Area, who says we are going to stay here in the life time of this car for our family? In fact, there's a nontrivial probability that we will be moving.

If the tech was really ready, we'd be buying one of these intead:

(hydrogen fuel cell vehicle! Yummy!)

or

(that's a Jeep SUV hybrid...wait...it's called an EV, but its not really, it's also not really out for sale, alas)

There are two cars that I can in no way justify buying that I really, really want. They say that your first time and your first love are people that are forever imprinted on your soul: you never forget them and you are always remain to some degree in love with them. That would happen to be true for me about my first car. That was a 1978 Jeep CJ5 with the three speed, 4WD V8 304. That Jeep, the Beep as she was known, has forever marked herself in my soul. I have a 1992 Islander now with the straight 6, but she's not the same at all. If I could, I'd buy another Beep:


That's not my Beep, cuz I don't have a pic of her. Alas. However, you get the idea. It's not a family car though and that disqualifies it from being bought for a few years. Sad part is each year there are fewer and fewer of them: extinction's a unforgiving biatch. Maybe I ought to make an equivalent...lol. Lasers, supercomputers, rockets...cars? Interesting career path that.

Oh, that last car I can't justify? Well, if I were single I might squinted hard enough to buy it, but...

(I've loved small sports cars since my Dad had a Spyder when I was in high school)

Lyuda likes the idea of getting it too. That's her kind of car. lol. We'll need to save up a bit first though!

Ok, readers, what kind of car do you want?

INL Nuclear Hydrogen Update

A team of scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory earlier this month reached a major milestone with the successful production of hydrogen through High-Temperature Electrolysis (HTE).

The milestone was reached when the Integrated Laboratory Scale experiment started producing hydrogen at a rate of 5.6 cubic meters per hour.

The achievement was recognized at a media event in Idaho Falls Sept. 18.

"This is by far the biggest achievement we've had," said Carl Stoots, the experiment's principal investigator.

High-Temperature Electrolysis is a system of producing hydrogen very efficiently by using technology originally developed for solid oxide fuel cells. HTE is a significant improvement over the more conventional methods to produce hydrogen. HTE uses an electric current through water to separate it into hydrogen and oxygen. Combined with a clean power source such as a next-generation nuclear plant, HTE could produce hydrogen at 45 to 55 percent efficiency.

Some idle thoughts. I wonder what the drawbacks would be to attach this sort of set-up to most of our nuclear reactors would be? 5.6 cubic meters/hour is not that impressive, but it is a scale up from the previous lab tests. I wonder what the limits are?

Hydrogen Fuel Cell Cars: An Update

There are three companies that I am aware of that are chasing the fuel cell vehicle technology pot of gold. One of them I highlighted before: it's GM. They have their Sequel, Equinox, and others. The Equinox is the vehicle they are using for the so-called Project Driveway where a number of the fuel cell vehicles will be leased in selected markets for GM to get experience with how the FCVs will work in real life conditions.


Honda is working on their own FCVs. Just today they are going to conduct their own version of Project Driveway. I have actually seen commercials for the Honda on TV. I'd like to see one up close and take it for a spin, but I have to admit with the projected family growth over the near future we're going to need more space that the Honda Clarity is going to offer.

Toyota, btw, is also chasing the FCV cup, so to speak. However, they're more invested in the hybrid technology and make their pitch that it is better environmentally than hydrogen cars here.

hrm. Maybe I ought to invest in a hydrogen fueling station? After all, there are plenty of uberdoubleplusgreens in the SF Bay Area...

The Biotech Fuel Economy

The answer to the looming fuel crisis in the 21st century may be found by thinking small, microscopic in fact. Microscopic organisms from bacteria and cyanobacteria, to fungi to microalgae, are biological factories that are proving to efficient sources of inexpensive, environmentally friendly biofuels that can serve as alternatives to oil, according to research presented at the 108th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in Boston.

When it comes to alternative fuels, currently ethanol is king. Almost all ethanol produced in the United States is fermented from readily available sugars in corn. Ethanol from corn has also come under much criticism lately, accused of being responsible for rising food prices.

Researchers are looking at alternate biomasses as food for microorganisms to ferment into ethanol. The most attractive are known as lignocellulosic biomass and include wood residues (including sawmill and paper mill discards), municipal paper waste, agricultural residues (including sugarcane bagasse) and dedicated energy crops (like switchgrass). The problem is, unlike corn, the sugars necessary for fermentation are trapped inside the lignocellulose.

Govind Nadathur and his colleagues at the University of Puerto Rico have been looking at unusual ecosystems and unusual organisms to find enzymes to help extract these sugars.

[...]

[Nadathur's proposed process] starts with sugar cane and hibiscus flowers, grown on local lands. These produce not only the obvious products such as refined sugar, molasses (which is used to make rum) and flowers, but also a large amount of waste in the form of biomass. Using the enzymes in their library, Nadathur and his colleagues could break down the biomass to sugars and ferment them to ethanol, trapping the carbon dioxide that is produced during fermentation. They then would feed the carbon dioxide to microalgae in ponds that would produce a polymer that could be refined into biodiesel or jet fuel. The spent microalgae could then be harvested and used as fertilizer for the next round of sugar cane and hibiscus, thereby closing the cycle.

[...]

Sergei Markov of Austin Peay State University has developed a prototype bioreactor that uses the purple bacterium Rubrivivax gelatinosus to produce enough hydrogen to power a small motor.

"Certain purple bacteria, which usually grow in the mud of various ponds and lakes, have the ability to convert water and carbon monoxide into hydrogen gas (note: only a certain set could use CO). The problem was how to effectively supply each bacterial cell in a liquid bacterial soup with gaseous carbon monoxide," says Markov.

The answer was attaching the bacteria to numerous tiny hollow fibers inside an artificial kidney cartridge. Water and gasses can freely diffuse through the fibers, but bacteria, due to their large size, cannot. The hydrogen gas from a small fifty milliliter "artificial kidney bioreactor" has been directly injected into fuel cells and has produced enough electricity to power small motors and lamps. The only drawback is that carbon monoxide is not readily available , but Markov says it can be easily produced from biomass using a specific thermochemical process. There are also other bacteria that produce carbon monoxide.

One researcher and her lab, though, are investigating what could perhaps be considered the holy grail of hydrogen production: pure hydrogen from only water and sunlight, with a little bacterial help. Pin Ching Maness of the National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, Colorado, is researching cyanobacteria that harness the power of the sun to break the bonds in water, separating the hydrogen from the oxygen. There is a problem. One of the hydrogenase enzymes the cyanobacteria uses in this process is sensitive to O2, which makes sustained hydrogen production extremely difficult.

Luckily a certain purple bacterium use a similar hydrogenase, but one that is tolerant to O2. Maness and her colleagues have identified the genes that the purple bacterium uses to produce the tolerant hydrogenase. They have also identified the genes a particular model cyanobacterium uses to produce the sensitive hydrogenase and have knocked it out. They are currently in the process of cloning the genes for the tolerant enzyme into the model cyanobacterium. The next step is to verify that the genes have been successfully incorporated into the genome and are expressed. Over the next few years additional research will need to be done to ensure all the requirements are there for the construction of an active hydrogenase enzyme.

Let me also point out that Amyris, founded by coLabbies, and Solazyme, with some ties also with the Lab (albeit more tenuous) are two companies that are local and working towards the same sorts of goals that I am familiar with. Their people are extraordinarily talented and with the staff they have, I am sure that they are going to make it past the startup phase. While I am sure they are going to make it big time, they are hardly the only companies in the arena and the whole gig is going to be huge. In fact, you are looking at, from my point of view, the turning point where the biotech guys, especially the synthetic biology types, are approximately the same place as the dotcommers were circa 1994.

The BioBoom is very, very soon.

PS. there are those that are claiming that they can do $1/gallon biogasoline. If so, hang on tight! I really hope any nations dependent on oil extraction have other means of income for their economies.

More Hydrogen From Algae

As gas prices continue to soar to record highs, motorists are crying out for an alternative that won’t cramp their pocketbooks.

Scientists at U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory are answering that call by working to chemically manipulate algae for production of the next generation of renewable fuels – hydrogen gas.

“We believe there is a fundamental advantage in looking at the production of hydrogen by photosynthesis as a renewable fuel,” senior chemist David Tiede said. “Right now, ethanol is being produced from corn, but generating ethanol from corn is a thermodynamically much more inefficient process.”

Some varieties of algae, a kind of unicellular plant, contain an enzyme called hydrogenase that can create small amounts of hydrogen gas. Tiede said many believe this is used by Nature as a way to get rid of excess reducing equivalents that are produced under high light conditions, but there is little benefit to the plant.

Tiede and his group are trying to find a way to take the part of the enzyme that creates the gas and introduce it into the photosynthesis process.

The result would be a large amount of hydrogen gas, possibly on par with the amount of oxygen created.

“Biology can do it, but it’s making it do it at 5-10 percent yield that’s the problem,” Tiede said. “What we would like to do is take that catalyst out of hydrogenase and put into the photosynthetic protein framework. We are fortunate to have Professor Thomas Rauchfuss as a collaborator from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana who is an expert on the synthesis of hydrogenase active site mimics.”

This is a press release before the work has been done, really, folks, but an interesting idea all the same. Let's hope that the ANL guys are not just talking...forgive me, for I know what I do...vaporware.

Company Claims Vastly Better H2 Electrolysis

QuantumSphere Inc. says it has perfected the manufacture of highly reactive catalytic nanoparticle coatings that could up the efficiency of electrolysis, the technique that generates hydrogen from water. Moreover, the coatings could also eliminate the need for expensive metals like platinum in hydrogen fuel cells.

Boasting 1,000 times the surface area of traditional materials, the coatings can be used to retrofit existing electrolysers to increase their efficiency to 85 percent--exceeding the Department of Energy's goal for 2010 by 10 percent. The scheme holds the promise of 96 percent efficiency by the time cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells hit automobile showrooms, according to the Santa Ana, Calif., company.

Now let's see if this is vaporware or not. :D

Company link.

Solar cell directly splits water for hydrogen

Plants trees and algae do it. Even some bacteria and moss do it, but scientists have had a difficult time developing methods to turn sunlight into useful fuel. Now, Penn State researchers have a proof-of-concept device that can split water and produce recoverable hydrogen.

"This is a proof-of-concept system that is very inefficient. But ultimately, catalytic systems with 10 to 15 percent solar conversion efficiency might be achievable," says Thomas E. Mallouk, the DuPont Professor of Materials Chemistry and Physics. "If this could be realized, water photolysis would provide a clean source of hydrogen fuel from water and sunlight."

[...]

Mallouk and W. Justin Youngblood, postdoctoral fellow in chemistry, together with collaborators at Arizona State University, developed a catalyst system that, combined with a dye, can mimic the electron transfer and water oxidation processes that occur in plants during photosynthesis. They reported the results of their experiments at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science today in Boston.

Very interesting. I wish I knew moe about chemistry to venture an opinion about whether or not this might be scalable.

Another Contender For The Race to Bio-Hydrogen

For most people, the name “E. coli” is synonymous with food poisoning and product recalls, but a professor in Texas A&M University’s chemical engineering department envisions the bacteria as a future source of energy, helping to power our cars, homes and more.

By genetically modifying the bacteria, Thomas Wood, a professor in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering, has “tweaked” a strain of E. coli so that it produces substantial amounts of hydrogen. Specifically, Wood’s strain produces 140 times more hydrogen than is created in a naturally occurring process, according to an article in “Microbial Biotechnology,” detailing his research.

Though Wood acknowledges that there is still much work to be done before his research translates into any kind of commercial application, his initial success could prove to be a significant stepping stone on the path to the hydrogen-based economy that many believe is in this country’s future.

Renewable, clean and efficient, hydrogen is the key ingredient in fuel-cell technology, which has the potential to power everything from portable electronics to automobiles and even entire power plants. Today, most of the hydrogen produced globally is created by a process known as “cracking water” through which hydrogen is separated from the oxygen. But the process is expensive and requires vast amounts of energy – one of the chief reasons why the technology has yet to catch on.

Wood’s work with E. coli could change that.

His process converts sugar. Cellulose would be better, IMO.

Bio Hydrogen?

Hydrogen as an everyday, environmentally friendly fuel source may be closer than we think, according to Penn State researchers.

"The energy focus is currently on ethanol as a fuel, but economical ethanol from cellulose is 10 years down the road," says Bruce E. Logan, the Kappe professor of environmental engineering. "First you need to break cellulose down to sugars and then bacteria can convert them to ethanol."

Logan and Shaoan Cheng, research associate, suggest a method based on microbial fuel cells to convert cellulose and other biodegradable organic materials directly into hydrogen in today's (Nov. 12) issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences online.

The researchers used naturally occurring bacteria in a microbial electrolysis cell with acetic acid – the acid found in vinegar. Acetic acid is also the predominant acid produced by fermentation of glucose or cellulose. The anode was granulated graphite, the cathode was carbon with a platinum catalyst, and they used an off-the-shelf anion exchange membrane. The bacteria consume the acetic acid and release electrons and protons creating up to 0.3 volts. When more than 0.2 volts are added from an outside source, hydrogen gas bubbles up from the liquid.

"This process produces 288 percent more energy in hydrogen than the electrical energy that is added to the process," says Logan.

Water hydrolysis, a standard method for producing hydrogen, is only 50 to 70 percent efficient. Even if the microbial electrolysis cell process is set up to bleed off some of the hydrogen to produce the added energy boost needed to sustain hydrogen production, the process still creates 144 percent more available energy than the electrical energy used to produce it.

For those who think that a hydrogen economy is far in the future, Logan suggests that hydrogen produced from cellulose and other renewable organic materials could be blended with natural gas for use in natural gas vehicles.

Very kewl. We'll see how it works out. Lotsa tech turns out to be dead ends, so keep that in mind.

Hydrogen On the Cheap(er)

A new class of catalysts created at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory may help scientists and engineers overcome some of the hurdles that have inhibited the production of hydrogen for use in fuel cells.

Argonne chemist Michael Krumpelt and his colleagues in Argonne's Chemical Engineering Division used "single-site" catalysts based on ceria or lanthanum chromite doped with either platinum or ruthenium to boost hydrogen production at lower temperatures during reforming. "We've made significant progress in bringing the rate of reaction to where applications require it to be," Krumpelt said.

Most hydrogen produced industrially is created through steam reforming. In this process, a nickel-based catalyst is used to react natural gas with steam to produce pure hydrogen and carbon dioxide.

These nickel catalysts typically consist of metal grains tens of thousands of atoms in diameter that speckle the surface of metal oxide substrates. Conversely, the new catalysts that Krumpelt developed consist of single atomic sites imbedded in an oxide matrix. The difference is akin to that between a yard strewn with several large snowballs and one covered by a dusting of flakes. Because some reforming processes tend to clog much of the larger catalysts with carbon or sulfur byproducts, smaller catalysts process the fuel much more efficiently and can produce more hydrogen at lower temperatures.

[...]

Krumpelt will present an invited keynote talk describing these results during the 234th national meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston from August 18 to 23.

Anyone in Boston care to do a live blogging of the talk?

Is that a Potato in Your Tank?

he hydrogen economy is not a futuristic concept. The U.S. Department of Energy's 2006 Advance Energy Initiative calls for competitive ethanol from plant sources by 2012 and a good selection of hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicles by 2020.

Researchers at Virginia Tech, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), and the University of Georgia propose using polysaccharides, or sugary carbohydrates, from biomass to directly produce low-cost hydrogen for the new hydrogen economy.

According to the DOE, advances are needed in four areas to make hydrogen fuel an economical reality for transportation – production, storage, distribution, and fuel cells. Most industrial hydrogen currently comes from natural gas, which has become expensive. Storing and moving the gas, whatever its source, is costly and cumbersome, and even dangerous. And there is little infrastructure for refueling a vehicle.

"We need a simple way to store and carry hydrogen energy and a simple process to produce hydrogen, said Y.-H. Percival Zhang, assistant professor of biological systems engineering at Virginia Tech.

Using synthetic biology approaches, Zhang and colleagues Barbara R. Evans and Jonathan R. Mielenz of ORNL and Robert C. Hopkins and Michael W.W. Adams of the University of Georgia are using a combination of 13 enzymes never found together in nature to completely convert polysaccharides (C6H10O5) and water into hydrogen when and where that form of energy is needed. This "synthetic enzymatic pathway"research appears in the May 23 issue of PLoS ONE, the online, open-access journal from the Public Library of Science (www.plosone.org).

Polysaccharides like starch and cellulose are used by plants for energy storage and building blocks and are very stable until exposed to enzymes. Just add enzymes to a mixture of starch and water and "the enzymes use the energy in the starch to break up water into only carbon dioxide and hydrogen,"Zhang said.

A membrane bleeds off the carbon dioxide and the hydrogen is used by the fuel cell to create electricity. Water, a product of that fuel cell process, will be recycled for the starch-water reactor. Laboratory tests confirm that it all takes place at low temperature -- about 86 degrees F -- and atmospheric pressure.

The vision is for the ingredients to be mixed in the fuel tank of your car, for instance. A car with an approximately 12-gallon tank could hold 27 kilograms (kg) of starch, which is the equivalent of 4 kg of hydrogen. The range would be more than 300 miles, Zhang estimates. One kg of starch will produce the same energy output as 1.12 kg (0.38 gallons) of gasoline.

dude. Wow.

Okay. Seriousness time and political advocacy aside, this tech has a long ways to go. However, the idea that we drive over to a station and fill up with, oh, corn starch or potato starch is just plain amusing. I am sure that we can make the enzymes cheaper through one of the biotech companies going fullbore with a recombinant bacteria or yeast.

Hey, Carlos, what do you know/think on this one?

Hydrogen at the Corner Gas Station?

This takes in Natural Gas and pumps out hydrogen.

Interesting, but not as nice as if you could extract it from water.

I don't see what they do with the carbon though...