Hydrogen-Emitting Microbe Examined

Concerned Onlooker wrote to mention an article at Science Daily discussing a microbe that lives in volcanic environments, which emits Hydrogen gas as a waste product. "As the world increasingly considers hydrogen as a potential biofuel, technology could benefit from having the genomes of such microbes. 'C. hydrogenoformans is one of the fastest-growing microbes that can convert water and carbon monoxide to hydrogen," remarks TIGR evolutionary biologist Jonathan Eisen, senior author of the PLoS Genetics study. "So if you're interested in making clean fuels, this microbe makes an excellent starting point.'"

Comments

Quick question

[penguinoid]

Where does the carbon monoxide come from?

Re:Quick question

[Anonymous Coward]

Incomplete oxidation of carbon fuels.

So, while you might be quick to think "we still need to burn fossil fuels to produce this hydrogen", the point is, currently it's a WASTE material.
And besides, that, Its a nice carbon fixer.

In theory, these bacteria could be burned to produce more carbon monoxide (of course, that's just speculation, but I assume they're carbon based life forms).

Re:Quick question

[mlush]

Where does the carbon monoxide come from?

that was my first thought... However as other posters have pointed out Carbon monoxide is a product of incomplete burning of carbon, any carbon. And since its still burning its producing heat, consider a biofuel plant that takes in plant matter, partly burns it, feeds the carbon monoxide to the bugs and uses the 'waste' heat to power the hydrogen refinary and compression processes

Re:Quick question

[penguinoid]

OK, I guess that is cool than. I wonder if they can coexist with with the algae they were considering for making biodiesel from?

Also, you are *speculating* that the bacteria are carbon-based? I'm pretty sure that all life on earth is carbon based. Isn't that the current theory of evolution as well?

Re:Quick question

[ArsenneLupin]

In theory, these bacteria could be burned to produce more carbon monoxide

Somehow I doubt that this would produce enough carbon monoxyde to keep the cycle going. You know, perpetuum mobiles and all (laws of physics apply to living creatures too!). Btw, it has already been tried with other critters.

Re:Quick question

[squoozer]

Also, you are *speculating* that the bacteria are carbon-based? I'm pretty sure that all life on earth is carbon based. Isn't that the current theory of evolution as well?

I think it is unlikely we will find squishy life that isn't carbon based simply because carbon is the only atom that can form highly complex molecules (well under extreme pressue silicon can form some fancy stuff but that's really academic). It's not that we haven't looked hard enough it's just plain impossible to form molecules as complex as DNA and proteins using anything other than carbon.

Notice above that I said squishy life. I think it is entirely possible that we may develop or find machines that appear to us to be alive. If they were based around processors then I can believe we would have silicon based "life". It would be fundamentally different to us though. A lot of people, IMHO, fall into the trap of thinking that they will find life that is essentailly like us but made of silicon or some other element - that just isn't going to happen.

Re:Quick question

[penguinoid]

This is a bad idea. Carbon monoxide is extremely poisonous, and to purposely make it means you are burning carbon inefficiently. In that case, you could burn carbon you save in steam to get hydrogen, a common method of hydrogen production.

I think that in some cases it might be a legitimate waste product (making charcoal, I think). I can't see why you couldn't also burn CO in steam, 2(CO) + H2O = H2 + 2(CO2) + energy. This should be exothermic otherwise the bacteria couldn't do it as an energy source.

Re:Quick question

[penguinoid]

It rather obviously won't. However, they could be used as a source of fuel -- if it does not take too much energy to separate the bacteria from the water.

Re:Quick question

[buffer-overflowed]

Well, it's doubtful they're perfect trappers of carbon, so no, it wouldn't be a perpetual process. If you did manage to get all the carbon from the carbon monoxide used trapped in the microbes, then burned them to release that carbon you still wouldn't end up with a perpetual motion machine because you're constantly feeding new inputs in. Heat to free the carbon, atmospheric oxygen to incompletely oxidize it, water to produce the hydrogen.

Not that that's a big deal. The microbes live in boiling water off what amounts to coal gas. And we have a shit ton of coal left in our backyard. Something like 300 years worth.

Re:Quick question

[MillionthMonkey]

So, while you might be quick to think "we still need to burn fossil fuels to produce this hydrogen", the point is, currently it's a WASTE material.

That's in the eye of the beholder. Solid oxide fuel cells can use carbon monoxide as fuel just as well as hydrogen. Carbon monoxide is a fairly energy rich substance. The guy who first prepared it in 1776 by heating ZnO and coke even thought he had made hydrogen because the blue flame it produces is so similar. I don't have numbers for CO and H2 handy, and if I did I'd be too lazy to check, but I'd suspect that burning a mole of CO releases more energy than burning a mole of H2, just by virtue of the fact that this bacterium makes its living converting H2O + CO -> CO2 + H2.

I assume they're carbon based life forms

Of course they are. Carbon monoxide is a fairly energy rich substance and is surprisingly inert. It kills you by forming a stable complex with the hemoglobin in your blood. It adheres to binding sites meant for oxygen (cyanide has an even greater affinity) and ruins the entire hemoglobin molecule. Bacteria generally have no use for oxygen binding and transport proteins, and do not use hemoglobin or any other heme-containing protein (except for nitrogen-fixing bacteria), so in general one would not expect them to care about carbon monoxide- although being able to eat it is impressive.

Re:Quick question

[Dr. Cody]

In industry, this process is called a water gas shift reaction. This is a *very* mature technology which has been used since the days of gas lighting.

CO + H20 -> CO2 + H2

This wouldn't be the first microbe investigated to replace water gas shift reactors, but previous examples would need to come a long way to even approach the economy of the inorganic method.

Re:Quick question

[shawb]

Nope, they can't coexist (at least not function together.) This bacteria requires an anoxic environment, while the algae will release oxygen as a byproduct of photosynthysis.

That said, I really don't think we can think of chemotrophs (organisms that survive by converting one chemical to another) as a very good energy source. Recreating their environment and feedstocks on an industrial scale would be very energy intensive. In the case of the bacteria in the article, even gathering and purifying the carbon monoxide from emissions of hydrocarbon burning energy plants would be quite energy inefficient. You can probably just forget about collecting the carbon monoxide from a car's tailpipe; it would be a total waste of energy.

Re:Quick question

[Anonymous Coward]

How about just completely burning the biofuel and getting as much energy as you can out of it the first time? Probably a lot simpler, safer, cheaper and more efficient.

Re:Quick question

[ArsenneLupin]

Well, it's doubtful they're perfect trappers of carbon, so no, it wouldn't be a perpetual process.

... and even if they were, it would still not be perpetual. Indeed, you're keeping the skin (i.e. the hydrogen). So you do indeed need to put something in (lots of it) to get that hydrogen.

you're constantly feeding new inputs in.

Indeed, you have to...

Re:Quick question

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually this would *not* be equivalent to a perpetuum mobile.
(Hint: sun.)

Re:Quick question

[ArsenneLupin]

(Hint: sun.)

Except that the article didn't say anything about that bacterium's photosynthetic abilities. On the contrary, the article is making it pretty clear that the bacterium gets its energy by oxydizing carbon monoxyde to carbon dioxyde. Part of the energy goes into the hydrogen, and another part (the most important for the organism itself) goes into reducing CO to C for its own needs. However, it should be obvious than any energy that can be gained by oxydizing that C is much less than what went into making it in the first place. So, yes, you can reclaim some CO by durning the "dead" bacteria, but you will get far less of it than what it consumed during its life. You do need an external source of CO to keep the process going (in nature, this source is volcanic, and in industry it will have to be an incomplete combustion nearby that will need other fuels in addition to the bacteria themselves.)

Re:Quick question

[Anthony]

Serious? How is iron smeltered?

Re:Quick question

[Anonymous Coward]

CO is not inert.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inert

Re:Quick question

[TapeW0rm]

H20 + C0 = H2 + C02? (or have I misremembered my school chemistry?)

Re:Quick question

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm.

Cigarettes?

Re:Quick question

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, CO binds to hemoglobin but cyanide takes oxygen's place in the electron transport chain.

Re:Quick question

[Anonymous Coward]

Intentionally incompletly burning the carbon is a bad idea. The incomplete burn means you produce less energy at that stage. Some of that energy is recovered by turning it into Hydrogen, but the extra step will add more inefficiency to the process.

Re:Quick question

[spammyd]

2H20 + C -> CO2 + H2 2H2O + 2C -> 2CO +H2 so in a world of incomplete reactions the result of heating Carbon with water leads to a mixture of carbon monoxide,carbon dioxide and hydrogen. carbon monoxide has bad effects on the hydrogen fuel cells, which leads to it having to be removed from the hydrogen, luckily there have been catalysts found to combine it with water to make carcon dioxide and hydrogen. this organism thrives on a combination of CO2 C0 H2O and H2 which are the end products of coal to hydrogen conversion.

Re:Quick question

[Anonymous Coward]

Incomplete oxidation of carbon fuels.

Yes indeed. This is called coal-gasification and what these bacteria do is called the water-gas-shift-reaction and has been employed for about 80 years to produce "town gas".

And besides, that, Its a nice carbon fixer.

Bullshit, the carbon is released as carbon dioxide.

As as for burning bacteria, feeding yet more bacteria with the waste product of that, then feeding them back and also extracting hydrogen from the process... Somewhere I read about something called "conservation of energy", but it certainly wasn't on slashdot.

Interesting my ass.

Re:Quick question

[Hugonz]

Carbon monoxide is a fairly energy rich substance. The guy who first prepared it in 1776 by heating ZnO and coke even thought he had made hydrogen because the blue flame it produces is so similar.

If I sniffed the smoke of coke and ZnO together, I'm sure I'll be seeing more than a blue flame...

Disclaimer: I fully know that coke is one of the variants of fuel carbon

Re:Quick question

[RodgerDodger]

This got marked interesting? The bacteria lives in a sodding volcano... where do you think that the CO comes from?

Re:Quick question

[floorgoblin]

Actually, we have about 250 years of coal left at current consumption levels. If we begin using it more and more, at a modest increase of 2% a year, for example, we have 75 years left. Not to mention the environmental consequences of increasing the rate at which we burn coal.

Re:Quick question

[gurps_npc]

I thinkyou are speculating quite a bit. You are making a lot of assumptions that are not neccessarily valid, and basing your information on biased data.

First, we have FAR more information about carbon compounds because we are made of carbon compounds. We simply don't know anywhere near as much about non-carbon compounds to really make the statement you are making.

Secondly, we continue to know very little about any compounds, carbonor otherwise, outside of a fairly narrow range of pressure and heat that is found on earth. Go to Jupiter and boom, that pressure and heat create conditions that we know little about and where carbon compounds are useless.

I am not saying you are definitely wrong, just that no one on earth really knows enough to make definitive statements like the ones you made.

Re:Quick question

[squoozer]

Come back and say that again when you have studied MO theory. You will find that extended bond formation as found in things like proteins is simply not possible with any atom other than carbon due to the way the molecular orbitals are arranged*. I'll grant you that under extreme pressure it is possible to make some very short chains of silcon and they have, IIRC, been observed (spectroscopically) in space.

As far as we can tell life requires complex molecules. Complex molecules can only be formed by carbon. I'm not saying that our data isn't biased towards carbon - it is - but you would be mistaken to think that we don't know enough chemistry know what atoms can form chains.

I agree that we don't understand the inside of Jupiter very well but that doesn't mean that life has any chance of existing there. It would be a sure bet that the inside of Jupiter is far to hot for anything but the most basic of molecule to survive even under the crushing pressure. Above about 500 deg C complex molecules basically don't exist.

I'm sure that at some point we will find some forms of life that are very exotic, living off all manner of energy sources. I am 100% convinced, however, that they will be living in environments that a broadly similar to our own in terms of pressure and temperature. For instance, I could envisage us finding primative life in the upper layers of the Venucian atmosphere and under the surface of Mars. Both places are very hostile to us but they aren't fundamentally hostile to complex (carbon) molecules.

* carbon is unique because it is small enough to be able to form sp3 hybridized orbitals. Silicon can hybribize its orbitals under extreme pressure but the pressure required grows with each extra bond.

Re:Quick question

[gurps_npc]

Your comments sound awfully lot like the words of physicists when asked what happens when you try to travel faster than light, in say the year 1919. They would be absolutely sure it could happen and laugh at anyone that said "We don't know enough to answer that question".

When I say "we don't know enough about molecular science" and you respond, "not according to x science", it does not demonstrate my ignorance, it demonstrates your arrogance.

Your argument is a solid "as far as we know" and I am saying we don't know, and we can't possibly know because we have not done nearly enough looking, testing, or experimenting.

"As far as we can tell life requires complex molecules". That statement is not true at all. What is true is that Our definitions of life pretty much require complex building blocks (molecules are your assumption, made for no reason whatsoever besides the fact that we know about them). Yes, the only complex building blocks we know of are carbon molecules. We assume that therefore carbon molecules are the only ones, but have ZERO evidence to prove that.

The absence of knowledge is not an indication that something is unlikely.

If I wanted to get REALLY strange, I could start off by discussing such wierd ideas as life on nuetron stars, or black holes, or a thousand other very common areas that we have zero conception of. We don't even need molecules at all for that.

But I don't have to go that far. Most of the universe is not in the pressure or heat range found on earth, and we do not know enough about how even normal chemiclas react there.

Your statement about complex molecules don't exist is not based on fact, it is based on conjecture that has not been fairly tested.

I am willing to say that:

1) If all our theories regarding how matter interacts at temperature and pressure found in gas giants of the range of jupiter to say 500 x jupiter are correct.

and

2) There are no other laws of physics that apply in those situation and that we don't know of.

Then you would be correct. But I would bet you my entire life savings that neither of those statements are correct. We have never examined samples from a natural area with that much pressure and energy (which would give it the thousands of years for stable complex forms to create). We have not made a serious attempt to create such complex molecules in a high pressure, high temperature (or low temperature) area. Without at least a couple of decades of solid research, claims that it is impossible are just foolish people thinking we know everything when we don't.

Despite the common belief, we have not discovered all there is to know, science is not coming to an end (which by the way, people have been claiming for 200 years), we continue to know but a small fraction of the laws of the universe.

Re:Quick question

[Anonymous Coward]

Can someone please explain why the coded him as Troll? It seems clearly NOT to be one. He has a clear opinion, not a prank, that differs from the writer, and makes at least an attempt to be polite. He may be an idiot, but it does not seem to be a Troll. Is the moderation really that bad?

From the the FAQ:

Offtopic -- A comment which has nothing to do with the story it's linked to (song lyrics, obscene ascii art, comments about another topic entirely) is Offtopic. Flamebait -- Flamebait refers to comments whose sole purpose is to insult and enrage. If someone is not-so-subtly picking a fight (racial insults are a dead giveaway), it's Flamebait. Troll -- A Troll is similar to Flamebait, but slightly more refined. This is a prank comment intended to provoke indignant (or just confused) responses. A Troll might mix up vital facts or otherwise distort reality, to make other readers react with helpful "corrections." Trolling is the online equivalent of intentionally dialing wrong numbers just to waste other people's time. Redundant -- Redundant posts are ones which add no new information, but instead take up space with repeating information either in the Slashdot post, the attached links, or lots of previous comments. For instance, some posters cut and paste otherwise legitimate comments in multiple places in the same discussion; the pasted versions are Redundant.

So how long...

[Mo6eB]

...before somebody patents it?

Re:So how long...

[ajs318]

It's a bacterium, a life form. Hence, by virtue of being alive, it owns any IP rights that may subsist in its DNA. You would need its informed consent to patent it {in a country where such rights were even transferrable; internationally, the rights may still be construed as belonging to the bacterium}. In the event of a dispute, it ought not to be too difficult to demonstrate that the bacterium's consent was not informed {since it has only one cell and therefore is barely capable to understand anythig} and therefore its IP was illegally misappropriated; therefore you will end up owing posthumous backdated royalties to a microbe.

If it could only convery CO2 as well

[kaptink]

If it could only convery CO2 as well it could save the planet and end the use of existing fuels. woohoo!

Re:If it could only convery CO2 as well

[Anonymous Coward]

Plants?

Re:If it could only convery CO2 as well

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be quite a trick to get hydrogen out of carbon dioxide. How is this modded insightful?

Re:If it could only convery CO2 as well

[Soruk]

The article refers to CO (carbon monoxide) - which also has no hydrogen. This is supplied by water. Not entirely sure what the bacterium does with the carbon-based resultant products, but CO + H2O --> H2 + 2C + O2. This is probably how it generates its oxygen supply (assuming it needs one) and also a supply of carbon for making proteins/DNA/etc...

Re:If it could only convery CO2 as well

[Anonymous Coward]

more like CO + H2O -> H2 + CO2

Re:If it could only convery CO2 as well

[modmans2ndcoming]

umm, retard, the bacterium has to get something out of the metabolization. The waste is H2, so unless it can directly metabolize CO2, in which case there are more efficient ways to get it, it is after the carbon and the O2 separately.

Re:If it could only convert CO2 as well

[kaptink]

convert!

let me get this straight...

[Anonymous Coward]

so... my future car is gonna run off of a bunch of microbes farting? sounds like something out of family guy

Excellent!

[commodoresloat]

Now we can invent cars that run purely on the farts of microbes.

Re:Excellent!

[gbobeck]

I'd rather drive a farting microbe car than a pollution belching car any day. Although, does this mean that the jokers of the future would use Beano instead of sugar to kill an engine?

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

Other people already have cars that run on microbe piss.
(ethanol)

Working temperature?

[hunte]

This is a nice job for a microbe, but I don't have see any information about the working temperature that this microbe needs to make the chemical process... Maybe this could be another problem... The volcanic habitat it's very hot (and hard to emulate)...

Re:Working temperature?

[GMO]

Just because it can live at such temperatures surely doesn't mean that it has to use these temperatures to carry out the h2 generation.

Enzymes can work at a range of temps, from 0 to 100 degrees C, so there's no reason to suppose that NiFe hydrogenase (or whatever enzyme) has a catalytic requirement for a particular temp.

Re:Working temperature?

[stunt_penguin]

Okay so maybe this particular microbe would be difficult to use to produce Hydrogen, but if the microbe's DNA can be used to genetically engineer another one which works at 20-30 degrees, then we may be onto something much more efficient. Heh, it would be just our luck if the only suitable bacteria for the manufacturing was something infectious and lethal, like Ebola (^^)

Re:Working temperature?

[stunt_penguin]

Oh no, I just remembered Ebola is a virus. D'oh!

Re:Working temperature?

[MichaelSmith]

Okay so maybe this particular microbe would be difficult to use to produce Hydrogen

The required heat could be provided by waste energy from a power plant. The flow of hot water from a gas fired power plant in my city is a well known fishing spot.

Re:Working temperature?

[squoozer]

It might live near a volcano. It doesn't live in it! Even the most extreme extremophile is only able to withstand aroudn 120 degC. Nothing like the 700+ found in the heart of volcanos. The environment might be hard to replicate but not because of the temperature. More likely it will be hard to replicate because we probably don't properly understand the chemistry of the bacterias natural environment.

Re:Working temperature?

[stunt_penguin]

Humm, the water needs to be completely free of any dissolved 02 though, which would be difficult, plus it says scalding hot, which I would take to be close to boiling.

Anyway- what's with this fossil fuel power plant idea- we're supposed to be trying to get rid of the things :op

Re:Working temperature?

[MichaelSmith]

Anyway- what's with this fossil fuel power plant idea- we're supposed to be trying to get rid of the things

True, but bioreactors lend themselves to reuse of many kinds of low quality (low temperature) waste heat. I recall something from Israel about accumulating heat in the bottom of extremely salty shallow ponds; also you could look at using waste heat (and gas) from landfill sites.

Re:Working temperature?

[JimJinkins]

Whatever the working temperature, it is likely to be hot enough that the only economic way to manufacture large quantities of hydrogen will be electric power. That means either heavy environmental costs for burning coal or a hard political fight for nuclear generating plants.

Re:Working temperature?

[Breakfast Pants]

120 deg C? Let me ask, can any life survive without liquid water? Or perhaps this is so deep under the ocean that the pressure raises the boiling point significantly?

Re:Working temperature?

[squoozer]

Correct. There have been a few extremeophiles that have been found living around ocean vents that are capable if living in water over 100 deg C. IIRC some were also found deep down geysers. Bring them to the surface and they die.

Re:Working temperature?

[Ex-MislTech]

Or perhaps this is so deep under the ocean that the pressure raises the boiling point significantly?

Yes, pressure alters the boiling temp a GREAT deal .

Naval ships use high pressure boilers to make 1,200 lb. steam to run their turbines if they
are not Gas Turbine ships .

Ex-MislTech

Re:Working temperature?

[budgenator]

You're going to have to heat the water close to boiling (of Water) to get the disolved O2 out anyways; that's where all of those bubbles come from when you heat water to about 75 C, it's the O2 disolved in the water. It's also why heated water freezes faster, less disolved O2 in it.
What's wrong fossil fuel power plant, obviously CO2 and worse emmisions are wrong but those are increasingly controllable at large scale point sources, but the alternative is basicly nuclear fission and we all know the emotional baggage the nuclear option has. With these bugs, a plant can be tweaked to produce predominately CO, the bugs converting to H2 plus sequester the CO2 as bacterial sludge, and any escaping can be captured by technological means at the exhaust stack. Small scale sources are much more difficult to capture emmissions economicaly, things like cars so we switch them to cleaner H2.

Re:Working temperature?

[stunt_penguin]

Hmm yea true- large scale capture is a lot more efficient, and you addressed a good point I'd though of- where the heck do we get enough CO to feed the bacteria.

Re:Working temperature?

[budgenator]

Certainly if by survive you mean supendining metabolic activity, in a bacteria context it's called sporulative form as oppose to spores in fungi which is more of a "seed-like" form. The bacteria in the article are spore orming, When growing conditions aren't right, they form spores and go into a hardened form of bacteria "suspended animation" until conditions improve. Anthrax does this as the article mentions, I've heard of anthrax spores being infective on the order of decades.

bad stomach bug!

[YuriGherkin]

Imagine getting this bug in your gut. Lighting your farts would have *devastating* consequences!

Re:bad stomach bug!

[Anonymous Coward]

It already does, the reason our farts smell is because of ch4 yep thats right methane.

Re:bad stomach bug!

[penguinoid]

It already does, the reason our farts smell is because of ch4 yep thats right methane.

Methane is a colorless, odorless gas; though it is odorized for safety. Farts smell because they are shitty air.

Re:bad stomach bug!

[Soruk]

Methane has no smell. Otherwise the gas companies would have no need to add the artificial smell to mains and bottled gas (at least they do in UK). What you're smelling are probably sulphur compounds.

Re:bad stomach bug!

[MichaelSmith]

add the artificial smell to mains and bottled gas (at least they do in UK).

Yes, here in .au as well. I think it is a pretty standard safety measure. Perhaps marine fuel should have something similar? A guy I know blew himself up in a water ski boat accident because the bilge filled up with fuel. The vapour is hard to detect.

Re:bad stomach bug!

[WormholeFiend]

actually, there are also hydrogen-producing bacteria in the gut, which account for some flammable farts

Why did they have to go at the bottom of the ocean to get some of those, when they could've just probed their own asses?

Re:bad stomach bug!

[kurzweilfreak]

I guess now we know the reason for all those alien abductions.... they're probing our asses, not for experimental purposes, but as a fuel source!

Re:bad stomach bug!

[smithmc]

  Yes, here in .au as well. I think it is a pretty standard safety measure.

And in the US as well. The compounds used are called mercaptans.

Re:bad stomach bug!

[riker1384]

Oh, the humanity!

So it "converts" ...

[Ihlosi]

... water (H2O) and carbon monoxide (CO) to Hydrogen (H2). What does it do with all the other atoms (one C, two O) ? Let me guess ... it makes carbon dioxide ?

Re:So it "converts" ...

[penguinoid]

Plants get their hydrogen from water -- so I can see getting hydrogen from GM plants as being useful, especially since they are cheap solar cells.

A current method of getting hydrogen is by passing steam over coal -- basically burning coal in water. I can't imagine it being much different to burn carbon monoxide in water to get steam, but maybe these bacteria do it more efficiently than we can?

Re:So it "converts" ...

[value_added]

I'd be careful of anything involving dyhdrogen monoxide.

Dihydrogen Monoxide is not believed to be carcinogenic, although it is known to be a component of a number of cancer-causing agents. Additionally, the cause of approximately 20 percent of all cancers is not known, and there is reason to suspect that DHMO may play some role in these as well. Clearly, more research is needed before DHMO's role is fully enumerated.

More information is available from the main website

Re:So it "converts" ...

[squoozer]

This is just a bacterial version of the water-gas shift reaction. What makes people think that a microbe is going to be any more efficient that a big hunk of specially designed plant (sorry for the pun).

The bacteria might be cheap but it comes with a huge amount of overhead in terms of having to maintain all its cellular functions. I bet half it's energy is wated multiplying.

Re:So it "converts" ...

[Anonymous Coward]

There are high chances it uses them to form its organic matter to grow.
H2 is probably only a byproduct of this.

It's like O2 produced by plants. It's only a byproduct during the chlorophyllic reaction.

Re:So it "converts" ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet half it's energy is wasted multiplying.

I have the same problem...

Re:So it "converts" ...

[stirz]

I wouldn't call it a waste if this bacteria uses half its energy for reproduction. More bacteria mean more hydrogene being produced, or did I get this wrong?

Re:So it "converts" ...

[penguinoid]

>> I bet half it's energy is wasted multiplying.
I have the same problem...

Wow... You are so much more efficient than me its not even funny.

Or was that in math class? ;-)

Re:So it "converts" ...

[squoozer]

It can be a problem. More bacteria means you have to keep more warm and fed. If 50% of the CO you are putting in is being used simply for bacterial growth you had better have a very cheap supply of CO and very cheap way of looking after the bacterial culture. My guess is that it would be to expensive to run the hydrogen plant simply due to running costs. Things like this have been tried before (I was taught by one of the lead researches). They got close to making it economical but had to give up as they couldn't squeeze the last few percent out of the organism. The problem is nature is designed to replicate itself not produce hydrogen. It's not a factory so it, generally, isn't as efficient as a factory.

Re:So it "converts" ...

[penguinoid]

The bacteria might be cheap but it comes with a huge amount of overhead in terms of having to maintain all its cellular functions. I bet half it's energy is wated multiplying.

The bacterium gets its energy from converting CO to H2. All the CO it takes in is converted to H2; this is how it "breathes". It uses the excess energy to live and reproduce. After using the energy it comes out as heat, so that it would be no less efficient than burning the CO (as that would directly produce heat). However, maybe the bacteria's living conditions are harder to reproduce than the conditions for burning CO in water, or maybe the heat energy cannot be recovered as easily (eg it might kill the bacteria).

Re:So it "converts" ...

[alba7]

All the CO it takes in is converted to H2; this is how it "breathes".

Nonsense.
Conversion of carbon or oxygen to hydrogen requires nuclear fission.
No such life form exists outside science fiction.

Re:So it "converts" ...

[milimetric]

uh... it probably eats that dude. Like, H2O + CO = H2 + CO2. So if it EMITS H2, it can't ALSO emit CO2 or else why's it doing all that work? It probably eats CO2. Not that I bother RTFA, but hey, this is slashdot.

Re:So it "converts" ...

[Anonymous Coward]

So if it EMITS H2, it can't ALSO emit CO2 or else why's it doing all that work?

What's that mean? You're emitting CO2, water, shit and hot air. Why shouldn't the bacteria emit more than one by product? And it has the same reason you have, to get at the surplus energy, dumbshit.

Eh?

[LiquidCoooled]

From the opening of the article:

Take a pot of scalding water, remove all the oxygen, mix in a bit of poisonous carbon monoxide, and add a pinch of hydrogen gas. It sounds like a recipe for a witch's brew. It may be, but it is also the preferred environment for a microbe known as Carboxydothermus hydrogenoformans.

If you remove the oxygen, won't you be left with Hydrogen anyway?

Re:Eh?

[Walkiry]

>If you remove the oxygen, won't you be left with Hydrogen anyway?

It was referring to the atmospheric oxygen (O2). This microbe is anaerobic.

Re:Eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Err. They probably(or obviously) mean remove the molecular oxygen.

i for one...

[Anonymous Coward]

...welcome our new hydrogen-emitting overlords!

Insightfull my ass

[penguinoid]

You are not going to get energy from CO2. At least not without burning something else, like magnesium. If you want to end the usage of fossil fuels, go nuclear (or solar).

Re:Insightfull my ass

[yobbo]

60% of the world's uranium deposits are in Australia. The majority of which is in my state, South Australia - the driest state on the driest continent on earth (besides Antarctica of course).

The South Australian government recently moved to double the uranium output of the Olympic Dam uranium mine. Guess how they're getting the water to mine the uranium? Desalination, powered by coal power plants.

Re:Insightfull my ass

[penguinoid]

Still, it's quite stunning to see that someone can think that they will "convery" CO2 into H2, misspell convert, get modded incightful, and that the mods think such an idea is less overrated than my suggestion of nuclear or solar.

As to your comment about using coal power to mine uranium -- does Australia hove the ability to enrich uranium and build a nuclear power plant? Is more energy burned as coal than can be extracted from the uranium (my guess is hell no), or is coal simply cheaper, at the current price? Also, you can get "nuclear" power in various ways -- guess where geothermal energy comes from.

Re:Insightfull my ass

[yobbo]

Nuclear power in Australia is a political impossibility.

To put things into perspective, my state government (which ironically sanctioned the expansion of olympic dam) threatened to take the Federal government to the full bench of the High Court because the feds wanted to store low level nuclear waste (think contaminated suits and the like) underground, in a desert town 400km away from the nearest major city.

Re:Insightfull my ass

[Professor_UNIX]

That seems like a pretty ignorant stance your citizens are taking. The safest place to store nuclear waste is to put it back in the ground where you got it from. Why not just use old uranium mines to store the waste? It's not like anyone wants to live next to a uranium mine anyway.

Re:Insightfull my ass

[Anonymous Coward]

I really hope your misspelling of "insightful" was meant to be humorous, especially right after you berate someone for their spelling. And if it was meant to be funny.... it wasn't.

Also, doesn't geothermal energy come from the heat from inside the earth and nuclear energy come as the result of a nuclear reaction? How exactly does geothermal = nuclear?

Re:Insightfull my ass

[hjarni]

Q. What keeps the inside of the earth hot? A. Heat from radioactive rocks inside the earth. Q. How does a nuclear power station work? A. Radioactive rocks heat water, generate steam, drive turbines. So geothermal power is generated from a 'natural' nuclear reactor.

Re:Insightfull my ass

[penguinoid]

Typo. You might notice I spelled it corretly in my post. But maybe that's why I got downmodded.

Lord Kelvin calculated that the earth would cool to a solid rock within a few thousand years. He was quite a genius, but now we know that the earth is heated by radioactivity. This radioactivity is significantly different than a fission plant in that almost all of the radiation is due to "natural" decay (alpha, beta, but almost no gamma==fission). It's the sort of decay that takes a million years for half of it to decay, and has less energy density (but lots of volume), but is still nuclear.

Re:Insightfull my ass

[Zen Punk]

Ummmm....well, no, not exactly. While they are both nuclear reactions(they involve the nucleus of the atom), the energy in your first example comes from the natural process of radioactive decay, which is quite different from nuclear fission which powers our nuclear reactors(and the good old A-bomb.)

A reverse form of catalytic converter

[www.sorehands.com]

This can be used for another form of Hydrogen Boost for Truckers. Instead of using electicity and water, it can use water, exaust gas, and microbe. Not only will it further reduce emissions by using them to produce hydrogen.

Re:A reverse form of catalytic converter

[Anonymous Coward]

This struck an interesting thought in my head, to follow this trend, increasing the number of microbes all designed to single tasks that support the truck, eventually would we come to a single organism, facilitating all these functions by incorporating all these microbes (for example, once we have many different microbes all doing different things, we made need other microbes to manage them). The most startling conclusion I can draw, would be living trucks (I wonder if the driver would ever become incorporated into the organic machine, his emissions being harnessed, his food being grown etc). We could be the zerg!

Re:A reverse form of catalytic converter

[Anonymous Coward]

Organic machines have long been used in transportation. They take in various organic materials and use various catalysts to oxidize them at a controlled rate. That and most chicks are more attracted to a guy riding one of these than an efficient sub-compact automobile.

Just great....

[Anonymous Coward]

We'll engineer microbes that eat all the water and make it into hydrogen, and soon the planet is lifeless and all animals die of thirst.

A few questions

[Anonymous Coward]

This is very interesting indeed. A low-energy process by which free hydrogen can be produced. But a few questions.

- The article mentions that oxygens need to be removed from the water; How much energy does this require?
- In what quantities is the hydrogen produced; What quantities is needed to power a fuel cell?
- How efficient is this process compared to electrolysis.

Also it says that the water needs to be boiling in order for the microbes to have optimal conditions; But then of course the energy has to come from somewhere. The water might be heated using solar or wind power i guess. Which brings us back to to the storage problem, and most hydrogen storage solutions(not based on pressure-tanks) require heat to release the hydrogen.

Re:A few questions

[WindBourne]

While I do not know the answer to #1, But I would guess not much.

As to how efifcient or the quantities, it probably does not matter if if can be used on a waste product. That is, if we use if on the exhaust from a power plant. Then, not only is the power plant cleaning up after itself, but it also has a product to sell.

As to electrolysis, well, I do know THAT it is every inefficient. Doing a water shift is much cheaper, and more efficient.

As to the storage, that is a different issue (you have already established via eltrolysis comparision, that this is desirable). There was a recent approach to H2 storage, that was suppose to be efficient, cheap, safe, and easy to do (news in the future at 11).

Re:A few questions

[penguinoid]

The article mentions that oxygens need to be removed from the water; How much energy does this require?

Not much, if any significant portion of the water is converted to hydrogen.

In what quantities is the hydrogen produced; What quantities is needed to power a fuel cell?

One molecule of hydrogen for each molecule of carbon monoxite. How much wattage does your fuel cell output?

How efficient is this process compared to electrolysis.

Probably more so; however, how efficient is it compared to making hydrogen by burning coal in steam?

Re:A few questions

[Anonymous Coward]

This process is suited to conversion of low grade coal and shale oil. It's not a pollution free panacea. Bugs to convert CH4 and CO to H2 are real handy because you can make the stuff at the mine. You need heat, likely from burning some of the fuel) to break out the CH4 and CO and then use bugs and water/steam from the heat to convert these. Where does the carbon go? More bugs! Wonder if we can feed the extras to chickenz(mmm tastes like peat). The old fashioned approach was shipping the CH4 and CO by pipe to homes (coal gas). Couple bugification with gasification and your waste is now bugz...So the real question is, what do we do with the extra bugz? Are they likely to be as much of a problem 50k years from now as imagined fears of stored nuclear waste? What abotu the volume. If chickesn won't eat the bugz, will we be building houses out of them, trying to figure a way to dump them on the moon, or maybe use them as fill for New Orleans?

Re:A few questions

[Tim C]

The water might be heated using solar or wind power i guess.

That really depends. If the input energy required is lower than that which can be obtained from the liberated hydrogen then - after bootstrapping the process with some other source - it can maintain itself with no further energey input. All that happens is that the output is lower than it could have been otherwise.

Of course, I have no idea whether or not this is the case; just raising it as a possibility.

Re:A few questions

[bcattwoo]

As to how efifcient or the quantities, it probably does not matter if if can be used on a waste product. That is, if we use if on the exhaust from a power plant. Then, not only is the power plant cleaning up after itself, but it also has a product to sell.

An efficient power plant shouldn't have much in the way of CO emissions though. Typical concentrations of CO in a coal power plant flue stream are less than 0.1%, whereas carbon dioxide will probably be more like 15%. It also should be pointed out that most flue streams still contain a reasonable amount of oxygen (1-5%) as well, which could be a problem for these anaerobic bacteria.

Carbon monoxide isn't so much a waste product but a byproduct of incomplete combustion. It still contains a fair amount of energy and could be used as a fuel itself. Way back when Town Gas, a fuel composed primarily of CO and H2 among other gases, was use for lighting and heating.

Re:A few questions

[Anonymous Coward]

The higher the temperature of water, the less dissolved gas it can carry (kind of counterintuitive I know). Boiling water contains very little oxygen...

The easiest (and probably cheapest) way to remove oxygen is to throw in another bacterial species that uses up oxygen (they can be seperated by a membrane if need be). The membrane needs only to have a pore size of around .2um, so it would be easily permeable to oxygen.

Interestingly, before oxygen scrubbing catalysts and oxygen free nitrogen sources (most "nitrogen" gas that is bought contains trace amounts of oxygen) were widley available, strict anaerobes were often cultured by throwing them into a sealed jar along with a (seperate) culture of E. coli. The E. coli would consume all of the oxygen, allowing the growth of the anaerboes.

The catalysts for removing oxygen (that I am familiar with) require some amount of hydrogen (making water), and can be easily regenerated by heating.

Mods on crack?

[MaelstromX]

No, the article says that the organism intakes CO and H2O and expels H2. This does not mean that a simple reaction occurs with CO and H2O as reactants and H2 as a product.

From TFA:

The bug boasts at least five different forms of a protein machine, dubbed carbon monoxide deyhydrogenase, that is able to manipulate the poisonous gas. Each form of the machine appears to allow the organism to use carbon monoxide in a different way. Most other organisms that live on carbon monoxide have only one form of this machine. In other words, while other organisms may have the equivalent of a modest mixing bowl to process their supper of carbon monoxide, this species has a veritable food processor, letting it gorge on a hot spring buffet all day.

So apparently the CO is acted upon by the proteins, and likely the H2O is used to sustain other life processes in some other way, and the H2 is simply the end result of some metabolic process at the end. If you want to account for the C and the O's, they probably went into forming some protein somewhere.

Re:Mods on crack?

[penguinoid]

So apparently the CO is acted upon by the proteins, and likely the H2O is used to sustain other life processes in some other way, and the H2 is simply the end result of some metabolic process at the end. If you want to account for the C and the O's, they probably went into forming some protein somewhere.

No. This is how the bacteria breathes, and almost none of that should end up in its body. CO2 is a gas, it's not useful for forming proteins. True, there's a bunch of obscene chemical processes between taking in CO and H2O and expelling H2 and CO2, but how is that different than our breathing?

Re:Mods on crack?

[budgenator]

if CO2 is a gas that's not usefull in making proteins carbohydrates and lipids, please feel free to explain to us why chlorophyllic plants use so much of it?

Re:Mods on crack?

[penguinoid]

if CO2 is a gas that's not usefull in making proteins carbohydrates and lipids, please feel free to explain to us why chlorophyllic plants use so much of it?

Plant don't use CO2. They use the C, and give off O2 as waste. And they require energy to do this.

Actually, that may work for it.

[WindBourne]

Most of the CO would probably be coming from a power plant buring coal, Natural Gas, Oil. From there, they can run the output of the plant into a number of "bio reactors". The first one could very well hold this critter as that would have the highest heat. From there, go to work with the CO2 eaters (IIRC algae) that were mentioned about a week ago (or so it seems). They will actually use the CO2 for like a plant but with a quick uptake.

Re:Actually, that may work for it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, any syngas manufacturer could use it to refine their product into H2. With biproducts being heat, coke for blast furnaces, and anti-dandruff shampoo.

Inputs are bituminous coal. We have something like 300 years+ of the stuff sitting in the poorest rural area of the US, Appalachia.

You should have followed the links

[WindBourne]

It requires a catlyst and high temps (700-1100C). The high temp is a lot of energy. I am not a power engineer, but I would be willing to bet that they want the temps from their plumes to be quite a bit lower.
possible that this bacteria may do the job for a fraction of the price. esp when combined with other processes.

Re:You should have followed the links

[squoozer]

Well the great thing about a catalyst is that it's not consumed in the reaction so it shouldn't cost that much. IIRC it is now possible to use iron oxide as the catalyst which is, I think you would agree, pretty cheap. The high temperature is a problem but it's possible to get 85% efficiency. I would be supprised if the microbe can manage 10%. The heat may not be that much of a problem either. I have seen test steam reformers that run off mirrors (presumably they could also be made to perform the shift reaction). It's a difficult problem but one that can be solved.

Oops

[penguinoid]

2(CO) + H2O = H2 + 2(CO2)

That should be CO + H2O = H2 + CO2

Prior art

[Anne Thwacks]

Unfortuately, when this gets in to the wild, it mutates into a microbe that eats plastic, and aeoroplanes drop from the sky like stones.

As described in a 1950's science fiction story.

Re:Prior art

[MichaelSmith]

As described in a 1950's science fiction story.

I would have to dig up the book but I am pretty sure The Andromeda Strain dates from the mid to late 60's at the earliest.

Of his earlier books, Terminal Man is probably closest to realisation now.

Re:Prior art

[Cheerio Boy]

I would have to dig up the book but I am pretty sure The Andromeda Strain dates from the mid to late 60's at the earliest.

Actually I think he's referring to a 1970's story more than a 1950's. Specifically Mutant 59 - The Plastic Eaters. Not a bad read really.

Re:Prior art

[penguinoid]

Yes, yes, VERY funny. An aquatic anaerobic bacterium that lives in boiling water at volcanic vents and eats carbon monoxide, will suddenly get into the wild (it already was in the wild) but instead decides to live in an oxygen environment in the air below freezing temperatures eating plastic off aluminum airplanes. And do so quickly enough to cause the plane to crash.

Re:Prior art

[Anne Thwacks]

Presumably those nice GM people (not the car ones) plan to modify something happy to live in your house so you can power your mobile phone with the oxygen. This is what will get (via passenger's clothes) on to planes.

As to fast enough to make a plane crash, in the original story, whose name I forget, having last read it before jfk was assassinated, it eats the insulation off the wires which is not only fatal, but prevents mayday messages cos the radio needs wires.

I think the story was written by the same guy that wrote about planes crashing from metal fatigue shortly before the DeHavilland Comet actually did. That story was definitely written before 1960.

PBS NOVA ScienceNOW

[t0ddsh3rman]

There is a good 14min broadcast of whats involved with hydrogen as a viable fuel source.
I believe the question of where to get the hydrogen from is discussed and microbes come up.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3210/01.ht ml

Re:PBS NOVA ScienceNOW

[penguinoid]

Currently, all our hydrogen comes from fossil fuels. But that's not a problem; hydrogen can be gotten in other ways. Until they can solve the hydrogen storage problem, I don't see hydrogen going anywhere (except through the tank walls). I think that for fuel cells, alcohol or methane would be better. For cars, use biodiesel, which works in unmodified diesel cars, or alcohol, or methane (methane and alcohol can be made from some waste products)

Re:PBS NOVA ScienceNOW

[protonbishop]

hydrogen storage is indeed the problem:

1kg of hydrogen (H2) has power equivalent of gallon of gasoline. A 15 gallon tank of gasoline would be replaced by a 18^3 feet of H2 gas (at STP). Kinda big, even for a hummer.

Compress the H2 to "fit" in same physical dimension is very, very expensive, not to mention the resulting impact on physical weight on containing fuel tank, and high-pressure connectors on the tank.

So, we really need microbes which can fart quickly so that we don't need to store the hydrogen.

Not new, but maybe promising

[jxm387]

When I worked at Mobil as an engineer (before Exxon swalled them) there was a project working on microbes that consumed CO2 and excreted long chain hydrocarbons that could be used as fuel. Unfortunately they were slow and difficult to control. I imagine that microbes thriving under volcanic conditions would be hard to use commercially, but perhaps the conditions could be replicated in certain settings or the mechanism transplanted into other microbes (any microbiologists want to comment?). The ideas are good but the technology is a long way off!

Re:Not new, but maybe promising

[penguinoid]

That sounds really interesting if it is not a scam. Where do your microbes get their energy from, and why do they waste it turning CO2 into fuel?

Re:Not new, but maybe promising

[thedletterman]

This isn't by far the only microbe that releases hydrogen as a byproduct, I had examined this matter on several occassions when talking about what I think will eliminate the demand for oil importing, a hydrogen combustion engine (a la Mazda's Renesis hydrogen/petro combustible). Eliminating the need for gas for vehicles would make the US pretty much oil independant. Hydrogen can not only be converted by microbes and burning petrol chemicals as a previous author noted, but can easily be converted by nuclear powerplants, electro-chemical reactions such as solar, as well as other electro-mechanical devices such as steam turbines and windmills. The positive note I think would be the elimination of the millions of tanker trucks hauling fuel every day. Any petrol station with a water and power line could manufacture their own fuel.

Re:Not new, but maybe promising

[jxm387]

Unfortunately I was only exposed to the project during a briefing on strategic development projects. The project was aborted because it wasn't feasible, so there is little chance of following up to learn more. CO2 source was atmospheric but there was no discussion of the energy source or drivers to hydrocarbon production.

Re:Not new, but maybe promising

[Ex-MislTech]

I think the best hope for bio-fuels is the Algae research being done, it already
outpaces soybean oil by a massive magnitude . In fact I don't think any other known bio
process can beat the Algae production of oil at this time .

Article here :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiesel

Excerpt:

        * Soybean: 40 to 50 US gal/acre (40 to 50 m/km)
        * Rapeseed: 110 to 145 US gal/acre (100 to 140 m/km)
        * Mustard: 140 US gal/acre (130 m/km)
        * Jatropha: 175 US gal/acre (160 m/km)
        * Palm oil: 650 US gal/acre (610 m/km) [2]
        * Algae: 10,000 to 20,000 US gal/acre (10,000 to 20,000 m/km)

Further information:

http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html

Excerpt:

Enough biodiesel to replace all petroleum transportation fuels could be grown in 15,000 square miles, or roughly 12.5 percent of the area of the Sonora desert .

The Salton sea has no outlet, and has huge algae blooms that are causing mass fish die offs
and , and the salt level is rising to the point that nothing will live in it soon .

Also phosphates from agriculture are washing into the salton sea .

Massive Algae track ponds fed by this water could be used to desalinate the salton sea, lower
the phosphate levels, and provide enough oil to power the entire US .

It is hard to believe, but the math is there, and the Algae really is just a very efficient form of
solar energy . The simplest life forms are often the best at one task .

Ex-MislTech

ObFarscape quote

[Sooner Boomer]

"You fart Helium?"

Most promising

[defile39]

This is likely the most promising potential method of creating a renewable fuel source. There has been some work done on this above and beyond what the article discusses. By using thermophillic bacteria (or their genes coding specific enzymes, at least), we have been able to create bacteria that can produce H2 at considerable rates using nothing more than cellulose and water. To date, no one has been able to make this an effecient process, however. The search is still on for H2 production rate increases (and the technological infrastructure to utilize this as a fuel source when it does become viable).

My ongoing gripe...

[jandersen]

Why oh why do people, who feel they have somethin to tell that involves references to species ALWAYS abbreviate the generic name? How the hell is anybody to guess WTF things like 'E. coli', 'D. radiourans' or other phrases refer to? So what does the 'C' in 'C. hydrogenoformans' mean - assuming that 'hydrogenoformans' shouldn't have been 'hydrogeniformans' as well?

Names of biological species consist of two parts: the generic name and the specific epithet. Now, since there's significantly more than 1 genus of bacteria that begin with 'C', it is by no means self evident which one we are talking about; so if I want to look up what else is known about this bacteria, I am probably not going to be able to find anything useful, because the people in the scientific community who know about these things are going to use the full generic name. Which is one reason why it is important: when you post to a public newsservice, you either convey precise information or you are simply running with some stupid gossip. In my opinion, if you can't be bothered with looking up and checking the basic information, don't bother at all; I have no time for gossip.

Re:My ongoing gripe...

[khedron the jester]

You could just RTFA...

Re:My ongoing gripe...

[MaelstromX]

Far be it from you to RTFA where your question is answered in the FIRST SENTENCE.

Take a pot of scalding water, remove all the oxygen, mix in a bit of poisonous carbon monoxide, and add a pinch of hydrogen gas. It sounds like a recipe for a witch's brew. It may be, but it is also the preferred environment for a microbe known as Carboxydothermus hydrogenoformans.

As to the abbreviation -- it's just shorter that way, and in the case of the quote in the summary, that was pulled from the original press release and the full name had been given prior to the subsequent references which were abbreviated.

It's just like a news article referring to someone by surname. It's perfectly fine if the person is initially identified, but if the person isn't then it is highly irresponsible.

Yes, Zonk should have fixed that in the summary but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the Slashdot "editors" to do their job correctly.

Re:My ongoing gripe...

[buffer-overflowed]

The first paragraph has the entire name, then they switch to abbreviation:
Carboxydothermus hydrogenoformans

Re:My ongoing gripe...

[smithmc]

  Why oh why do people, who feel they have somethin to tell that involves references to species ALWAYS abbreviate the generic name? How the hell is anybody to guess WTF things like 'E. coli', 'D. radiourans' or other phrases refer to? So what does the 'C' in 'C. hydrogenoformans' mean - assuming that 'hydrogenoformans' shouldn't have been 'hydrogeniformans' as well?

Oh, come on. Ever heard of Google? I got "Carboxydothermus hydrogenoformans", plus a bunch of articles on the subject, in about 10 seconds.

Re:My ongoing gripe...

[jandersen]

I did - that is not the point.

You can't rely on the link to the article to be available; especially not if the article gets slashdotted. You can use abbreviations when you are in a context. You are not in the context of the article when you just copy a paragraph from the middle of it and create a link.

Re:My ongoing gripe...

[RockDoctor]

Why oh why do people, who feel they have somethin to tell that involves references to species ALWAYS abbreviate the generic name? How the hell is anybody to guess WTF things like 'E. coli', 'D. radiourans'
I do know the feeling.
Correct form is that the first time in an item, you quote the full binomial designation, and in later mentions of that organism, you abbreviate the generic name. It makes the paper easier to write and easier to read. If there are multiple organisms mentioned in the work with possible ambiguity in the abbreviated forms, then you might use two-lettered abbreviations, or a whole syllable.
If a writer quoting a formal press release (or for that matter, reading one) can't get their head round this to produce something like "C.[Carboxydothermus] hydrogenoformans" when they're quoting snippets, then they don't deserve the extra 3% on their pay check for being a "science" writer.

get a (*#&$%$ grip

[puzzled]

  George Bush, he is in favor of this so called 'hydrogen economy'. There is your first tip off that its bunk.

  Conservation (insulation, hybrids, etc)
  Biodiesel.
  Biodiesel & ethanol from waste materials.
  New nuclear plants.

  Those four things, in exactly that order, might make a difference. Most everything else is an oil company wookie. Hydrogen is produced most often from ... fossil fuel powered sources! It requires the existing gas station infrastructure.

  Foreign Policy magazine recently had an article on what feels good versus what is doable in alternative energy. Everyone needs some hard facts on these matters and later today would not be too soon.

  Oil companies, politicians, and easily confused environmentalists are not good sources of information - this is fast becoming a problem for engineers and economists ...

Re:get a (*#&$%$ grip

[jo7hs2]

Typical Slashdot, couldn't manage to make an argument about an alternative fuel source without revealing your politics.

Re:get a (*#&$%$ grip

[puzzled]

  Excuse me? Bush is a sock puppet for the oil companies and you and I both know it. He is an astonishing barrier to responsible behavior on the part of our nation and you can't talk about fuels without talking about our government's position.

Re:get a (*#&$%$ grip

[jo7hs2]

Here we go again, another liberal telling me what I do and do not know.

Re:get a (*#&$%$ grip

[puzzled]

  Can't address the subject without bringing up your politics, can you?

  And what do you think George Bush is? A chicken hawk draft dodger, but peel that away and ... intrusive big government liberal to the core.

Re:Mods on crack? NO! Just Morons modding!

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell do you expect from a site where leftist social engineering trumps science based real engineering and the arts and letters crowd cares near nought for the scientific community beyond what comforts may be beat from it. It's a clear case of 17th century french doily making history and it's impact on the social structure of today being more important to these folks than knowing how things work. Look at their effing research in their fields. It's not industry and science that's important. Instead it's the social consequences and how they may be exploited so that those ignorant of the workings of nature and science may rule. They don't call it ruling, they call it management. Of course managers are better than the rest of ue and they must be compensated accordingly for their diligence in assigning work and redistributing the fruits of out labors.

Mod me down assholes. The true /. afficianado seeks out -2 posts. Ever wonder why /. doesn't offer the option of inverting scores? The managenent doesn't want YOU reading the good stuff without wading through all their propaganda to do so.

Morons can be an environmental hazard too.

What the hell is that called?

[Anonymous Coward]

When you read the article they have these things that look like explanatory hyperlinks to words like 'water', 'research' and 'scientists', but are, instead, commercials tied to the words. What is this called? Whatever it's called, it's VERY IRRITATING. And I wish Slashdot would not use submissions based on web pages that do this. When I am tricked into an advertisement this way I feel like I've crawled into bed with someone who suprises you with both male and female sex organs. It just doesn't seem right to be surprised like that.

Re:What the hell is that called?

[foniksonik]

This is Science Daily dude.... it's an aggregation site for university science publications...

Are you referring to the clearly marked section at the bottom of the page that says "Ads by Gooogle"???

If not then you've got your own problems with an adbot of some sort injecting ads into your browser...

Re:What the hell is that called?

[viewtouch]

I wish that the Slashdot submitter had linked to the original article instead. It doesn't have these crazy advertizing gimmicks embedded in the text.
http://www.tigr.org/news/pr_12_02_05.shtml

No, I'm NOT talking about the ads at the bottom under the 'Ads by Google' disclaimer. I'm talking about the hijacking of the hyperlinks themselves as an advertising gimmick, a gimmick which is introduced at the cost of the article actually having any hyperlinked text.

You're telling me that I should read all the disclaimers at the bottom of every page first? That's a joke, right? Or are you one of those people who thinks that the answer to dealing with confusion on a page is to educate the whole world as to how to not let a confusing page confuse them instead of simply fixing what's confusing on the page? I know people who feel the way you do. I fired one of them last week.

I'm running Firefox. Let me know how to disable what this web site's screwing around with the hyperlink concept. I'm sure a lot of us would like to know. On the other hand, I'm betting that you don't know how to do this, and that it can't be done, and that you are just bullshitting us all (or thinking that you are, anyway).

Re:What the hell is that called?

[Atario]

I feel like I've crawled into bed with someone who suprises you with both male and female sex organs.

How often does that happen to you?

Re:What the hell is that called?

[foniksonik]

I seriously don't know what you're talking about.... you must have a plugin running for Firefox that's doing that.... I even opend firefox on my Mac (which is a default install) and can't find the links you're referring to.

Re:What the hell is that called?

[viewtouch]

After the page loads its text, in a final step of page presentation, some words in the article, ''water', 'gas', 'environment', 'research' and 'scientists' become hyperlinks. If you click on 'gas' you don't get an explanation of what gas is. Instead, you get a link to http://www.bankerspetroleum.com/s/Home.asp With water, a click takes you to http://www.owaters.com/order.html?=ya+water&OVRAW= water&OVKEY=water&OVMTC=content
It's enough to make you seriously doubt the integrity of the people behind a site called "Science Daily".
I don't see how this could be anything but a revenue scheme for the Science Daily web site.

Re:What the hell is that called?

[leobh]

It's called Intellitext, and if you use Firefox with the Adblock extension (or better, Adblock Plus), you can block the script that creates the Intellitext, just as you can block banner ads, flash and iframes. Probably the extension I value most.

Re:What the hell is that called?

[Anonymous Coward]

I already had Adblock installed and that didn't solve the 'problem' but when I installed Adblock Plus the annoying ads that were built into the words did go away. I hope I'm not the only one who has learned how to stop this abuse and is very grateful for the info you provided about how to stop it.

Re:What the hell is that called?

[foniksonik]

Apparently you're not crazy.... but i'm telling you I've never seen that behavior before. Still don't see it. Maybe it's the joy of using a Mac??? Don't know... sorry, I could be wrong.

Who farted?

[digitaldc]

It smells like that damn microbe again.

CO as a fuel itself

[MajorDick]

The funny part is with CO you dont need the hydrogen even, Wood Gas producers like thsose the Europeans (especially Belgians adn Germans used from 1930-1945) are fully sustainable on Just CO,

Under pressure CO will Burn just like any other "fuel" it requires a slightly advanced timing and higher compression (although not as high as diesel) but it burns fine and will work with current internal combustion engines, the PROBLEM is is nasty stuff to living organisms that depend on OXYGEN.

Google around for Wood Gas Producers and Engines, there is a fellow in Australlia that drives his truck around on wood.
But just the CO is enough , now the destructive gassification of wood/coal, will also produce pure hydrogen, that along with the CO burns even better.

I always had a thought to build a Grass Fueled Lawn mower, using the exhaust heat to Dry the clipping then burining them to drive the engine, kinda a lawn mower that EATS the grass, but alas I have no time, maybe by the time I retire, although by then the Internal Combustion engine will probably be illegal.

Lots of research

[MasonMcD]

There has been research on hydrogenase enzymes since at least the 70s. I was a student worker in Dr. Leonard Mortenson's lab at the University of Georgia in the late 80s when they were working with Fe-based hydrogenase sequencing.

Give us a story about moving from the lab to the production line. Bacteria/enzymes that produce hydrogen is nothing new.

Obligatory Southpark Quote

[waterlogged]

"Dude, They're Farting FIRE!!!!"

Unfortunately...

[kureido]

The life support system needed to sustain the bacteria colony while the truck is not running (i.e., not producing heat, not producing CO) would probably be cost-prohibitive to mobile implementation of this idea. Unless, of course, gas stations started culturing bacteria so you could top off your H-farm along with your diesel tank.

Re:Unfortunately...

[Dmala]

Unless, of course, gas stations started culturing bacteria...

If you think this is not already being done, clearly you've never used a gas station restroom.

Efficiency?

[seven of five]

So if you have a tank of these bugs that produces 1 liter of H2 / minute, and a tank that produces H2 by electrolysis at 1 liter / minute, which of the two tanks consumes more energy?

Or is efficiency beside the point?

Could be better

[AndroidCat]

If they could make a microbe that converts lawyers and carbon-monoxide to hydrogen, then we'd have something! Talk about your vast renewable resource!

"First, we compost all the lawyers..."

Everyone can read the whole paper online

[dnarepair]

The paper was published in an Open Access journal so you can all browse that if the press release is too basic. Go to http://genetics.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request =get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pgen.0010065

not like it matters anyway

[cyberbob2010]

the second someone discovers it they will patent it.
correct me if I am wrong about this but isn't it like...40% of the human genome that is copyrighted now? And isn't most of it by private corporations?

RTFA

[cyclopropene]

umm, retard, the bacterium has to get something out of the metabolization. The waste is H2, so unless it can directly metabolize CO2, in which case there are more efficient ways to get it, it is after the carbon and the O2 separately.

What the hell are you talking about? Did you even read the freaking article, genius? The bacterium gets its energy out of the metabolization. The CO is its food source that it uses to generate ATP, just like you would have used sugar and oxygen to generate ATP if you had any brain cells firing this morning. Both H2 and CO2 are waste products, the bug just wants energy.

come on

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you want to produce an explosive fuel with huge storage issues? If you want liquid H2, you need refrigeration, and compression apparatus. It costs energy to maintain LH2.

LH2 has an energy density only slightly higher than gasoline (If my crack isn't too cheap).

Far more likely as an energy producing microbe are the multitude of algae which produce oils up to 60% by weight. The oils require only minimal processing to use in a diesel engine, are a liquid at ambient temperature, and don't asplode the neighborhood when you smoke by them.

Re:come on

[ityllux]

The combustion of liquid H2 does not produce greenhouse gases, unlike oils. The holy grail here is not energy density, but trying to restore the natural carbon cycle and curb catastrophic global warming.

Re:come on

[StillNeedMoreCoffee]

Absolutely correct. It is really how we can store and distribute energy to be useful with the lowest total cost. Cost here taking into account all the energy, and envirionment and cleanup costs.

This could be a good adjunct to biomass gasifiers

[dwk123]

Woodgass/biomass gasification is the first thing I thought of when I read the article, and it might be an ideal source of the necessary CO as there is already the (apparently necessary) low concentration of H2 as well. There are a couple problems with gasification that make it somewhat impractical for large-scale deployments on it's own. a) gasifiers work best in steady state conditions b) CO is relatively unstable, and doesn't compress/store well. With these microbes, you might well get the best of both worlds - a gasification system that is carbon-neutral and can run off say switchgrass grown in otherwise marginal agrigcultural land, plus a flexible fuel in H2 that can be transported, stored etc.

Actually

[Anonymous Coward]

He's right. http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/mim/environmental/htm l/hcn_text.htm

http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/chem99/chem9 9562.htm

That's from 5 sec of searching, but it is true. HCN binds to the heme quite strongly.

You of course are right in that cyanide kills by interfering in the electron transfer process as HCN binds to cytochrome a3 in mitochondria. HCN does bind to the heme in hemoglobin, too, just not as well as CO.

Re:Actually

[Anonymous Coward]

The treatment for cyanide poisoning is to move the cyanide off of the cytochrome and onto the hemoglobin by changing the oxidation state of the hemoglobin

Yeah, If...

[Nom du Keyboard]

So if you're interested in making clean fuels, this microbe makes an excellent starting point.

Yeah, if you live in a world full of CO. Of course, since CO is a highly toxic gas, you wouldn't actually be "living" there. And CO hardly comes for free since it's combustable as well.

I'd have found this more interesting if we had toxic CO dumps in need of cleanup.

Re:Mods on crack? NO! Just Morons modding!

[Anonymous Coward]

lol

I'm amazed that you can copyright a gene sequence

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, I never understood how a company can copyright a GENOME. It's one thing to say "we've based a new drug or product around a genome we found", which is a perfectly patentable invention. However to take something that [evolution/god/aliens/whatever you believe in] built, simply find it, and say that you somehow hold the rights to the existence of that, is absurd. That's like saying "I found a new species of plant life, I am going to patent it as if I created it myself".

Also, what happens if I have some genome in me that a company copyrighted in say the last 10 years? I think I can claim prior use since I certainly had it before they did.

This is why I am 100% for the open genome project, which simply strives to release the data into the scientific community at-large. If a corporation can use it to develop some new life-saving drug, so be it. But the simple fact is that the data is nothing more than a representation of the most complex coding system nature ever conceived, and that coding system belongs to everyone equally.

Patent/copyright law is one of the more baffling things we've let propogate through modern history. It lets people claim rights to things they obviously did not create, simply because there is no way for the actual creative force behind them to object. Even the "Happy Birthday" song was copyrighted because the original composer was long-since in the ground and obviously couldn't be in court to give his side to the story. Unfortunately this means that unless Mother Nature, God, Allah, or Aliens from Planet X-Q56ZZfart hire a lawyer and fight it, completely retarded claims to intellectual property will be upheld.

Patent?

[Anonymous Coward]

How long before this microbe gets patented?

Hydrogen is a good start...

[Anonymous Coward]

...but what we really need are microbes that crap gold.

Hey! I know!

[sean.peters]

Why don't you RTFA? Your question is only answered in the first freakin' paragraph:

Take a pot of scalding water, remove all the oxygen, mix in a bit of poisonous carbon monoxide, and add a pinch of hydrogen gas. It sounds like a recipe for a witch's brew. It may be, but it is also the preferred environment for a microbe known as Carboxydothermus hydrogenoformans.

Cue the "you must be new here" remarks in 3... 2... 1...

Sean

Another potential use?

[Tambourman]

Could one use this to build an add on to a smoke stack and extract hydrogen that way?

Do you drink beer or wine?

[geoffrobinson]

That's worse than "farting".

countercurrent heat exchanger

[Anonymous Coward]

very efficient, should work well for this application

Filters?

[Anonymous Coward]

Could carbon monoxide somehow be filtered from the atmosphere and pumped through a system involving these bacteria? That could kill two birds with one screaming mother-in-law...

About that Sig...

[susano_otter]

What do biology textbooks have to say about morality?

Except, possibly, "goodbye welfare, hello eugenics!"?

Re:About that Sig...

[penguinoid]

What do biology textbooks have to say about morality?

Except, possibly, "goodbye welfare, hello eugenics!"?

Scary thought, huh? But how much is reality woth?

Re:About that Sig...

[susano_otter]

I feel like I missed an exchange. What does the "woth" (worth?) of reality have to do with the moral teachings of biology textbooks?

Seriously, what moral teachings do you get from biology textbooks? In what way do you find them superior to the moral teachings of the religious orders?

Re:About that Sig...

[penguinoid]

Here. It does rather depend on what you mean by superior. Obviously it won't help you go to heaven...

Re:About that Sig...

[susano_otter]

By "superior" I mean "more likely to be an accurate description of an objective moral code worth following".

So you seem to be saying that the genetic imperatives, as described and interpreted by you, here, are an objective moral code, the only moral code, and our only proper guide in times of moral uncertainty?

Re:About that Sig...

[penguinoid]

Hmm. I think it is fair to say that if we evolved, then we are designed for having survinging offspring. Then it might be argued that such is our purpose in life, and that we should base our morality on that. Or, better, that we *do* base our morality on that. Not to forget that it is advantageous to generally help others, as they share some genetic code with you, in order of self, parents & children, 2 generations removed, tribe, clan, nation, species, class, etc., so being unilaterally selfish is not good. Of course religion has had thousands of years to think this stuff through.

PS: You can't fit evolution, the statement 'god created man', and Occam's Razor together no matter what God's representative to Earth says.

Re:About that Sig...

[susano_otter]

You can't fit evolution, the statement 'god created man', and Occam's Razor together no matter what God's representative to Earth says.

Oh, I'm not trying to. I admit to having an axe to grind, but it's mostly just a question of satisfying my curiosity. I have no interest in cleverly blindsiding you with some cleverly-concealed logical shenanigans or subtle Socratic misdirection.

Anyway, fair enough. But what's the evolutionary benefit to a species that seems to use most of its advanced cognitive powers rejecting the notion of morality defined as the need to propagate genetic material?

FUD

[benjamindees]

Hydrogen Hydroxide is perfectly safe! Don't let the anti-DHMO lobby tell you otherwise:

The Coalition and others have popularized the label "dihydrogen monoxide" over the more chemically-accurate "hydrogen hydroxide" because they know how loaded the former name is. "Monoxide" has become synonymous with pollution, toxic gases, industrial waste-- and while hydrogen hydroxide is sometimes a factor in these problems facing our world today, it is rarely the dangerous element.

Troll my ass!

[benjamindees]

How has Slashdot moderation become so broken?

Photochemical Generation of Carbon Monoxide and Hydrogen by Reduction of Carbon Dioxide and Water under Visible Light Irradiation

How fast does Carboxydothermus do this?

[RockDoctor]

I don't see the speed of reaction (growth) of these prokaryotes addressed anywhere in the cited article (or in the original PLoS article, but IANABiologist, so I could have missed it). Which does beg the question of whether these bugs can chew CO (or any of the other substrates that the PLoS article suggests the prokaryote may be able to subsist on) at a rate that's likely to be industrially interesting.

I emit....

[Anonymous Coward]

...methane as a waste product.