Organism Uses Solar Energy to Produce Hydrogen

Stan Freeman writes "CNET is reporting that Stanford University researchers have discovered a soil microorganism that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen. They are trying to adapt this naturally occurring anaerobic organism into one that can survive in a more normal environment. There is some more information on biological water splitting here on the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's (NREL) web site."

Comments

Cost measurements?

[justanyone]

Someone please contact the authors and ask the following questions:

* What is included in the cost measures?
* Do these costs represent capital costs or recurring costs?
* Is the cost per unit biomass (food) at market rates?
* What temperature band does this work under?
* Please cite patent numbers for those granted so we may link to them?
* When you cite, "maximal theoretical electron transport rate" is this presuming some currently unavailable technology or the maximal rate you ran your demonstration at?
* Are you using expensive fuel cell membranes, and if so, is the capital cost of these counted in?
* Are you factoring in any losses due to leakage, probable losses of uptime to the facility from maintenance required by your technology, etc.?

Gotta be exact here, we're a tough crowd for 'free energy' stories, we've seen too many of them...

Re:Cost measurements?

[Salis]

But it's much cheaper to mass produce organisms that perform electrolysis than to build solar panels.

Especially if the organism is photosynthetic (like the algae they mention). Add water, carbon, nitrate sources, and plenty of sunlight. And the organisms are easily transportable (unlike a bulky solar panel).

Re:Cost measurements?

[leonardluen]

you are forgetting something. it doesn't have to beat current forms of solar energy, that isn't the purpose. it only needs to beat current forms of hydrogen production. it doesn't matter how efficiently it collects solar energy, as long as it costs less resources to use this to produce hydrogen. and for these purposes the sun should be considered a free resource because it will be there whether or not we use it.

Re:How will this work?

[shenanigans]

No, you would (presumably) fill your car with hydrogen, which had been produced earlier by this bacteria somewhere. However, storage technology for hydrogen still has a long way to go, so don't expect this to have any practical implication on your life in the near future.