Blood Protein Used to Split Water

brian0918 writes "The Imperial College in London is reporting that genetically-engineered blood protein can be used to split water into oxygen and hydrogen. The abstract can be viewed for free from the Journal of the American Chemical Society." From the article: "Scientists have combined two molecules that occur naturally in blood to engineer a molecular complex that uses solar energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. This molecular complex can use energy from the sun to create hydrogen gas, providing an alternative to electrolysis, the method typically used to split water into its constituent parts. The breakthrough may pave the way for the development of novel ways of creating hydrogen gas for use as fuel in the future."

Comments

Energy output = input?

[Disoriented]

Now we just have to figure out if the amount of energy needed to synthesize the blood protein (say, X liters of hydrogen in a fuel cell) is less than
the energy of the hydrogen produced from this process... :)

--
Rare 680X0 and PowerPC posters!

Re:Energy output = input?

[Chris Burke]

I'd be willing to bet that this compound can be used to break multiple water molecules, just like our hemoglobin can carry another oxygen molecule after it drops one off. The source of energy that allows continued hydrogen production is the sun.

In which case, the main question is the rate at which you can produce hydrogen. How much of the substance do you need, and how much solar energy, to produce how much hydrogen over what period of time? That is what will define whether or not this is a practical method of producing hydrogen. One obvious point of comparison would be an equal-sized photovoltaic solar cell and water electrolysis machine. If it doesn't do better than that, it's pretty worthless. On the other hand it might be a very efficient way to convert solar energy into hydrogen gas for fuel cells, which would be sweet.

Not to mention the other possibilities it opens up in biochemistry. These proteins are fascinating, as is the idea of swapping out the bound metal atom to get different effects.

Re:efficiency

[TubeSteak]

Regardless, if you put in 2.7 units of energy and get out 0.000057 units... that seems really (s)low

Even if your math is off, it might not matter if the process can be scaled up, since solar power is cheap/free.

The important question is how cheaply can they synthesize the needed protein.

Thank you!

[mapkinase]

I would like to praise the submitter for providing a link to a peer-reviewed article. Does not happen very often, worth mentioning.

Next:

[jafac]

We'll need one of these that can split Oxygen and Carbon.

(ie - remove Carbon Dioxide from the atmosphere, and plant the Carbon somewhere safe - like maybe in empty petroleum resevoirs, where it came from).