E. Coli: The Next Big Source of Hydrogen Fuel?
by Jeremy Elton Jacquot, Los Angeles on 01.31.08
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
The lowly, ubiquitous E. coli, long given a bad rap for its association with food poisoning (see: spinach) despite its more common beneficial roles in the human stomach, could yet gain a broader measure of respectability if Thomas Wood's research pans out. Wood, a professor of chemical engineering at Texas A&M, successfully tweaked a strain of E. coli to get it to produce 140 times more hydrogen than it does naturally.
He and his colleagues selectively removed 6 genes from the strain's DNA to convert its cell machinery into a mini hydrogen-producing dynamo powered by glucose. The E. coli strain is able to convert sugar into hydrogen through a special fermentative process.
Wood's strain is well positioned to take advantage of the numerous scientific and industrial processes aimed at making sugar from various crops; he explains: "We want to take that sugar and make it into hydrogen. We're going to get sugar from some crop somewhere. We're going to get some form of sugar-like molecule and use the bacteria to convert that into hydrogen." In addition, because such biological processes don't require extra heating or electricity, Wood believes they would help to significantly cut down on costs.
His plan would also do away with the need for a means of storage and transportation, often cited as one of the most challenging aspects of hydrogen production, by allowing for hydrogen conversion "on site." As he puts it, "the idea is to make the hydrogen where you need it."
While much remains to be done before this process can be scaled up for commercial use, Wood is already confident of its potential to power the next generation of homes and vehicles. In its current state, he estimates that an individual would need to shovel the equivalent of a man's weight of sugar into a 250-gallon fuel tank so that the E. coli-reactor could produce enough hydrogen to power the average home for an entire day.
Via ::ScienceDaily: E. Coli Bacteria: A Future Source Of Energy? (news website)
See also: ::Pennsylvania In A Bio-Hydrogen State Of Affairs, ::Using Sweet-Toothed Bacteria to Produce Hydrogen, ::Sweet! The Chocolate-Powered Hydrogen Fuel Cell
what is the point? If you're feeding the bioreactor sugar, and getting hydrogen that means CO2 is either emitted or stored in the e-coli bodies until they die, and then turned into CO2... would be better off just turning the sugar into ethanol and burning that. the energy and chemical balances are about the same but ethanol is much easier to store and transport because it's a liquid, not a gas.
It's a shame that cellulose isn't being used as the fuel source. Paper/sawdust/hay/mulch to hydrogen (or ethanol) would seem to be a better goal.
@gbrunga:
Apparently you missed the part where it says the conversion would be done on-site. That means no need for transport.
e-coli is a decomposing bacteria with many different strains. By products/waste from their decomposition yield not only H but other soil enhancing/building traits that would be highly sought after in 3rd world countries. Labs around the country are trying to locate the right strain for a variety of resources. From Wood cellulose to Human waste E-coli's can span a broad perspective of the other side of consumption, and the expanded energy cycle can display a multitude of opportunities.
What happens when the GM E. Coli escapes to the wild and starts producing massive amounts of hydrogen?
@Ruben:
Ummm yeah, b/c massive amounts of sugar is just laying around that these wild GM E.coli can feed on...
When it escapes into the wild, it will probably be like the horrible environmental disaster that happened when modern brewers yeast got loose... creating vast lakes of Pilsner that displaced native ecosystems.
Though I will have to say... unless one is talking a very small man's worth of sugar, that would seem to imply much, much more expensive energy. It's sort of amusing the units they choose to use so as to obscure as much as possible the fact that they are probably talking about $30-$50 dollars worth of sugar every day.
atleast we are trying something else besides ethanol. which is the stupidest idea ever. just think about how you have to grow millions of corn plants, corn plants that deplete the soil of its nutrients more than any other plant, then all those corn plants arent feeding people they are feeding our cars. i care more about feeding my family than i do about getting around. I think solar powered cars is probably our best bet right now. along with just getting a bicycle. if we could somehow combine solar energy with wind and have like a solar energy powered fan on the back of our car...yeahh.