With current levels of Genetic engineering technology, is it possible to modify plankton or a similar bacteria that absorbs sunlight to excrete hydrogen? I don't know the energy requirements to turn water into hydrogen and oxygen using machinery but, could we make a bacteria do it for sunlight? If they excrete both hydrogen and oxygen as a waste material would it be posible to sort the hydrogen and oxygen easily?

What you describe is certainly not so far out as to be impossible or even implausible. But the bonds in a water molecule require a godawful amount of energy to break. You want a biofuel generator to have a high efficiency ratio. All you're going to do with that hydrogen is burn it and turn it back into water. You don't want the process of dismantling a water molecule to require a lot more energy than you'll get by reassembling it, or else you'd be looking for a way to use the input energy directly and bypassing the water molecules entirely.

The reason that the current generation of biofuels is in vogue is simply that the goddess handed us photosynthesis and we might as well take advantage of it while we're working on something else. But it seems to me that injecting solar energy (by some new process) into water molecules to extract the hydrogen so we can burn it is moving in the wrong direction. We're already injecting solar energy (by photosynthesis) into carbon dioxide molecules to extract the carbon so we can burn it, either as the oil that plants produce naturally or as the alcohol that we get by distilling the sugar that the plants produce naturally. (Or the old-fashioned way, waiting for it all to turn into petroleum. :))

Personally I'm not really excited about hydrogen as an energy source. We already live in an area, on purpose, that's not piped for natural gas and we like it that way. We burn heating oil and wood, neither of which has any tendency at all to explode. We'd not be the first house in our neck of the woods to sign up to have hydrogen pumped into or stored on our property!!!

Why not make it yourself by getting photovoltaic cells to convert the suns energy to split water and store it in pressurized tanks?

But it seems to me that injecting solar energy (by some new process) into water molecules to extract the hydrogen so we can burn it is moving in the wrong direction. We're already injecting solar energy (by photosynthesis) into carbon dioxide molecules to extract the carbon so we can burn it, either as the oil that plants produce naturally or as the alcohol that we get by distilling the sugar that the plants produce naturally. (Or the old-fashioned way, waiting for it all to turn into petroleum. :))


I'm thinking a bacteria like organism that seperates the hydrogen and oxygen.
Plants make CO2 into breathable oxygen via photosythesis. Why can't organisms using photosythesis make H2O into hydrogen and oxygen?

Why not make it yourself by getting photovoltaic cells to convert the suns energy to split water and store it in pressurized tanks?
Photovoltaic cells are not extremely efficient and probably more expensive then a single celled organism that reproduces on its own could be.

Besides this way can create harder math. (joke)

As far as I can tell there is evidence of a highly efficient thermochemical catalyst aided production of hydrogen gas. If I were given the funding a test tube based experimental approach can be used to find this. Of the two researchers who appear to have applied this to running internal combustion engines by producing hydrogen on demand, one is dead and the other has dissapeared. They reported doing something that appeared to be the production of hydrogen on demand simultaneously in 1976, allowing them to claim more than 100 miles per gallon using large sedans with V-8 engines and 180 proof alcohol apparently being conduced to release hydrogen in a slightly heated chamber in the presence of a catalyst.

One person has dropped aluminum into an alkali solution to run an older truck on the resulting hydrogen/oxygen gases.

We can use current organisms to produce both methane and alcohol. Engineering a new organism to produce hydrogen carries with it the task of not releasing the organism to the environment inadvertantly. The score card so far is not good as far as containing GMOs from spreading into and contaminating current gene pools.

As far as I can tell there is evidence of a highly efficient thermochemical catalyst aided production of hydrogen gas. If I were given the funding a test tube based experimental approach can be used to find this.
I'm doing it the hard way then?

Of the two researchers who appear to have applied this to running internal combustion engines by producing hydrogen on demand, one is dead and the other has dissapeared. They reported doing something that appeared to be the production of hydrogen on demand simultaneously in 1976, allowing them to claim more than 100 miles per gallon using large sedans with V-8 engines and 180 proof alcohol apparently being conduced to release hydrogen in a slightly heated chamber in the presence of a catalyst.

I've heard stuff like this before, 100 mpg technology that the big boys squished.

One person has dropped aluminum into an alkali solution to run an older truck on the resulting hydrogen/oxygen gases.

One of my friends had a 80's model Toyota pick-up he installed a three cylinder inline diesel, dangerous getting on the highway because of the lack of horse power and rev limit on the engine but it got 55-65 mpg and load weight wasn't an issue.

We can use current organisms to produce both methane and alcohol. Engineering a new organism to produce hydrogen carries with it the task of not releasing the organism to the environment inadvertantly. The score card so far is not good as far as containing GMOs from spreading into and contaminating current gene pools.
The Enviromental disaster part of the equation struck me this afternoon. I don't think its possible to prevent a release into the enviroment 100% of the time.
Probably, best to use methane producing organisms. From here on the issue becomes more of a biologic concern, what organisms produce the most methane under the conditions we could cheaply provide for them? I don't know I'm not a microbiologist.
I googled methane emissions and acording to
http://www.arc.ab.ca/extranet/CEM/Brochures2003/ECBM_flyer.pdf
their not as hazardous as burning coal and there's untapped deposits of it in places. For unlucky countries without large amounts of naturaul gas the development of this idea could give them a source of power till other options become availible.

The following is a reprint from an article in the Feb. 14 ,'04 Albuquerque Tribune

Combine this information (potential) with the last page (10) in the "Earth helps space,..." thread, a connecting article, on the same page, about the cost of upcoming electrical power line infrastructure maintenance, and the concept of a small commuter hybrid vehicle charging both it's own batteries, and the homes, the total amount of heat/CO2 stopped from being pushed into the ecosystem, the jobs created, and the rep. the US gains through "globalization", (etc.) and you get an idea how important this can be.

Reactor Produces Hydrogen (and Electricity/Heat) from Ethanol
by Lee Bowman, Scripps Howard News Service

Minnesota scientists said they developed the first reactor capable of producing hydrogen from a renewable fuel source -ethanol-, using a device built around an ordinary engines fuel injector.

"For hydrogen to become economical, we need a safe, portable, liquid fuel," said Larry Schmidt, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. "Ethanol is one of the best available."

His team reported Friday in the journal "Science" that a self-heating catalyst produces hydrogen from ethanol, water, and air at about 60% efficiency; generating electricity at about 4 cents per kilowatt hour.

Although Hydrogen is by far the most common known element in the universe, no free hydrogen exists, its all locked up with other elements. The major stumbling block to shifting to a hydrogen fueled economy has been that it costs four times more than the next
least expensive fuel, and has to be extracted from fossil fuels (natural gas or coal).

Hydrogen is now produced by -exclusively- by a process called steam reforming, which requires very high temperatures and large furnaces, consuming a lot of energy and suitable only for large refineries Schmidt said.

"Hydrogen is hard to come by," he explained. "You can't pipe it long distances. There are a few hydrogen fueling stations, but they strip hydrogen from methane/natural gas on site, and it increases carbon dioxide emissions, so it is only a short term solution until renewable hydrogen is available."

Ethanol, produced from corn, is already used in car engines, But as a hydrogen source for a fuel cell, the process would be three times more efficient,* " Schmidt said. A bushel of corn would yield three times as much power if its energy were channeled into hydrogen
fuel cells, rather than burned with gasoline.*

"We can potentially capture 50% of the energy stored in sugar (corn), whereas converting sugar to ethanol and burning ethanol in a car would only harvest 20% of the energy," Schmidt said.*

The difference says researcher ---Gregg Deluga, ---first author of the paper---,

is that all the water needs to be removed from ethanol before it goes into the gas tank, while the new process actually strips hydrogen from water, producing more hydrogen than ethanol would alone.

The invention uses a catalyst made from rhodium and ceria that heats up to temperature of nearly 1,300 deg. F and coverts the ethanol, water, and oxygen vaporized by the fuel injector into hydrogen and carbon dioxide. The whole reaction takes only 50 milliseconds, and is much cleaner than ethanol combustion in an engines.

However, the carbon dioxide in the mix means that the hydrogen won't work in the --high power-- fuel cells being used to power cars (on their own), although cells might eventually be adapted.

Schmidt said the team is still working to improve the process so it will yield even more hydrogen molecules for each ethanol molecule.

The hydrogen the scientists have been able to make thus far could work on some fuel cells. One application of the process might be in remote areas where it is not feasible to run power lines. where a unit small enough to hold in your hand could generate on kilowatt of power /hr. almost enough to supply an adverse home.

* + The potential of incorporating a Sterling heat recovery engine (on this size of a conversion) to boost the total electrical energy recovered per volume of fuel (to 75%{?}).

Welcome to the revolution.

I really like the idea you speak of, RonVolk, but I don't think with the levels of genetic engineering we have we can do it yet. Maybe some day though.

I remember from Sophomore year a little about photosynthesis and that it does convert water into hydrogen (some sort of ionic active transport which excited chlorophyl facilitates) and oxyen during the light cycle and uses the hydrogen to create glucose during the dark cycle. It takes inhales water and CO2 and exhales water and oxygen... it seems like something that could be accomplished and even improved upon sometime in the future, but as Cosmictraveler points out, it's not even necessary.

And thanks CosmicTraveler, that was a lot of excellent information which I very much enjoyed. Using transformed ethanol would allow us to make a good use of photosynthesis without having to make our own version.

Seems to solve a lot of the transportation, acquisition, and containment problems involved in hydrogen economy. Hydrogen cars don't seem out of reach anymore.

What's preventing cars from having their own onboard transformers? That way they could use regular gasoline/ethanol, strip off the hydrogen atoms and use that for a fuel cell. And I've heard fuel cells are roughly 65% efficient as opposed to gasoline internal combustion (25%). It seems if we had fuel-cell electric cars with onboard transformers, we could have cars getting 100 mpg and they would only create CO2, water, and heat. We have the technology. Why don't we do this? Just take a Honda FXC and rig a transformer to it, take out of the hydrogen tanks and put in a gas tank. Set to go.. for a long ways

RonVolk,

Yes, in fact is been done. but why? if were going to have biology make fuel why not ethanol, methane, methanol or hydrocarbons?
http://www.engr.psu.edu/h2e/Pub/Logan_etal_2.htm

http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=23556