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Microbes Churn Out Hydrogen at Record Rate
November 14, 2007By adding a few modifications to their successful wastewater fuel cell, researchers have coaxed common bacteria to produce hydrogen in a new, efficient way.
Bruce Logan and colleagues at Penn State University had already shown success at using microbes to produce electricity. Now, using starter material that could theoretically be sourced from a salad bar, the researchers have coaxed those same microbes to generate hydrogen.
By tweaking their design, improving conditions for the bacteria, and adding a small jolt of electricity, they increased the hydrogen yield to a new record for this type of system.
"We achieved the highest hydrogen yields ever obtained with this approach from different sources of organic matter, such as yields of 91 percent using vinegar (acetic acid) and 68 percent using cellulose," said Logan.
In certain configurations, nearly all of the hydrogen contained in the molecules of source material converted to useable hydrogen gas, an efficiency that could eventually open the door to bacterial hydrogen production on a larger scale.
Logan and lead author Shaoan Cheng announced their results in the Nov. 12, 2007, online version of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"Bruce Logan is a clear leader in this area of research on sustainable energy," said Bruce Hamilton, NSF director of the environmental sustainability program at NSF and the officer overseeing Logan's research grant. "Advances in sustainable energy capabilities are of paramount importance to our nation's security and economic well-being. We have been supporting his cutting-edge research on microbial fuel cells for a number of years and it is wonderful to see the outstanding results that he continues to produce."
Other systems produce hydrogen on a larger scale, but few if any match the new system for energy efficiency.
Even with the small amount of electricity applied, the hydrogen ultimately provides more energy as a fuel than the electricity needed to drive the reactor. Incorporating all energy inputs and outputs, the overall efficiency of the vinegar-fueled system is better than 80 percent, far better than the efficiency for generation of the leading alternative fuel, ethanol.
Even most electrolysis techniques, methods to extract hydrogen from water using electricity, pale in comparison to the new method.
"We can do that by using the bacteria to efficiently extract energy from the organic matter," said Logan. By perfecting the environment for the bacteria to do what they already do in nature, the new approach can be three to ten times more efficient than standard electrolysis.
Additional information about the new technology and how it works can be found in the Penn State press release at http://www.psu.edu/ur/2007/biohydrogen.htm.
The National Science Foundation
"We achieved the highest hydrogen yields ever obtained with this approach from different sources of organic matter, such as yields of 91 percent using vinegar (acetic acid) and 68 percent using cellulose," said Logan.
In certain configurations, nearly all of the hydrogen contained in the molecules of source material converted to useable hydrogen gas, an efficiency that could eventually open the door to bacterial hydrogen production on a larger scale.
Logan and lead author Shaoan Cheng announced their results in the Nov. 12, 2007, online version of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"Bruce Logan is a clear leader in this area of research on sustainable energy," said Bruce Hamilton, NSF director of the environmental sustainability program at NSF and the officer overseeing Logan's research grant. "Advances in sustainable energy capabilities are of paramount importance to our nation's security and economic well-being. We have been supporting his cutting-edge research on microbial fuel cells for a number of years and it is wonderful to see the outstanding results that he continues to produce."
Other systems produce hydrogen on a larger scale, but few if any match the new system for energy efficiency.
Even with the small amount of electricity applied, the hydrogen ultimately provides more energy as a fuel than the electricity needed to drive the reactor. Incorporating all energy inputs and outputs, the overall efficiency of the vinegar-fueled system is better than 80 percent, far better than the efficiency for generation of the leading alternative fuel, ethanol.
Even most electrolysis techniques, methods to extract hydrogen from water using electricity, pale in comparison to the new method.
"We can do that by using the bacteria to efficiently extract energy from the organic matter," said Logan. By perfecting the environment for the bacteria to do what they already do in nature, the new approach can be three to ten times more efficient than standard electrolysis.
Additional information about the new technology and how it works can be found in the Penn State press release at http://www.psu.edu/ur/2007/biohydrogen.htm.
The National Science Foundation
Hydrogen Current Events and Hydrogen News RSSWPI Researchers Take Aim at Hard-to-Treat Fungal Infections
A team of researchers at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) Life Sciences and Bioengineering Center at Gateway Park has developed a new model system to study fungal infections.
Proton's party pals may alter its internal structure
A recent experiment at the Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility has found that a proton's nearest neighbors in the nucleus of the atom may modify the proton's internal structure.
Berkeley Researchers Take the Lead Out of Piezoelectrics
There is good news for the global effort to reduce the amount of lead in the environment and for the growing array of technologies that rely upon the piezoelectric effect.
Vibrations key to efficiency of green fluorescent protein
University of California, Berkeley, chemists have discovered the secret to the success of a jellyfish protein whose green glow has made it the darling of biologists and the subject of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Earth's early ocean cooled more than a billion years earlier than thought: Stanford study
The scalding-hot sea that supposedly covered the early Earth may in fact never have existed, according to a new study by Stanford University researchers who analyzed isotope ratios in 3.4 billion-year-old ocean floor rocks.
UT Knoxville and ORNL researchers turn algae into high-temperature hydrogen source
In the quest to make hydrogen as a clean alternative fuel source, researchers have been stymied about how to create usable hydrogen that is clean and sustainable without relying on an intensive, high-energy process that outweighs the benefits of not using petroleum to power vehicles.
Central Africa's tropical Congo Basin was arid, treeless in Late Jurassic
The Congo Basin - with its massive, lush tropical rain forest - was far different 150 million to 200 million years ago. At that time Africa and South America were part of the single continent Gondwana.
Engineers image nanostructure of a solid acid catalyst and boost its catalytic activity
The catalytic processes that facilitate the production of many chemicals and fuels could become much more environmentally friendly thanks to a breakthrough achieved by researchers from Lehigh and Rice Universities.
'Dropouts' pinpoint earliest galaxies
Astronomers, conducting the broadest survey to date of galaxies from about 800 million years after the Big Bang, have found 22 early galaxies and confirmed the age of one by its characteristic hydrogen signature at 787 million years post Big Bang.
Computer predicts reactions between molecules and surfaces, with 'chemical precision'
Good news for heterogeneous catalysis and the hydrogen economy: computers can now be used to make accurate predictions of the reactions of (hydrogen) molecules with surfaces. An international team of researchers, headed by Leiden theoretical chemist Geert-Jan Kroes, published on this subject this week in the journal Science.
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