Rare Microorganism That Produces Hydrogen May Be Key To Tomorrow's Hydrogen Economy

[DogPoundPup]

When members of the Russian Academy of Sciences isolated a rare archaeal microorganism that breaks down cellulose and produces hydrogen, Biswarup Mukhopadhyay, an assistant professor with the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech, saw an opportunity to open a door for development of a cellulose-based high-temperature hydrogen production process. “Hydrogen can be easily converted to electrical and mechanical energy without any production of carbon dioxide,” said Mukhopadhyay, whose lab specializes in very high temperature or hyperthermophilic archaea and in energy production.

Elizaveta Bonch-Osmolovskaya and her colleagues at the Winogradsky Institute of Microbiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences discovered the rare archaeon that can chew up cellulose and exhale hydrogen. They found Desulfurococcus fermentans in the Uzon Caldera on the Kamchatka Peninsula, an isolated spit of land in eastern Siberia that is full of volcanoes and their remnants. D. fermentans degrades cellulose from the higher plants that fall in the caldera. Meanwhile, this renegade archaeon’s four closest relatives do not degrade cellulose or make hydrogen, Bonch-Osmolovskaya wrote in the February 2005 edition of the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology. Like most such organisms, these relatives reduce sulfur to hydrogen sulfide (think rotten eggs).

“Since hydrogen blocks the growth for most fermenting archaea, they rarely produce hydrogen,” said Mukhopadhyay. “But D. fermentans is not bothered by hydrogen. We want to discover why. One way will be to compare the genomes of D. fermentans and its relatives that do not have the special abilities.”

This novel hyperthermophilic archaea grows best at 80 to 82 degrees Celsius (176-180 Farenheit), close to the boiling point of water. “The ability to operate at high temperatures has advantages – it is faster and the hydrogen producing bioreactor will not be contaminated by common microbes,” said Mukhopadhyay.

At the Thermophiles 2007 conference in Bergen, Norway, Mukhopadhyay discussed collaboration with Bonch-Osmolovskaya, Haruyuki Atomi of Kyoto University, and Todd Lowe of the University of California, Santa Cruz. He had similar conversations with Venkat Gopalan of the Ohio State University and Nikos Kyrpides and Iain Anderson of the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (JGI).
More at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080707192643.htm

[unpossibles]

1. very cool! nt

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. EERE page on "Photobiological Water Splitting"

(It's a different, but similar biological method of producing hydrogen.)

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/production/photobiological.html

Photobiological Water Splitting

In this process, hydrogen is produced from water using sunlight and specialized microorganisms, such as green algae and cyanobacteria. Just as plants produce oxygen during photosynthesis, these microorganisms consume water and produce hydrogen as a byproduct of their natural metabolic processes. Photobiological water splitting is a long-term technology. Currently, the microbes split water much too slowly to be used for efficient, commercial hydrogen production. But scientists are researching ways to modify the microorganisms and to identify other naturally occurring microbes that can produce hydrogen at higher rates. Photobiological water splitting is in the very early stages of research, but offers long-term potential for sustainable hydrogen production with low environmental impact.

Learn more about photobiological water splitting - prospects, challenges, and research to address technical barriers - in A Prospectus for Biological Production of Hydrogen (http://www1.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/production/pdfs/photobiological.pdf">PDF 1.08 MB) http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html">Download Adobe Reader.