Most of you know that I am a chemical engineer. (OK. A few other things, too. But, I always wanted to be a chem e- since I’ve been 8.)

And, when I was at MIT, I had the opportunity (read: this research work was required as a function of my funding) to work on some very tradiational chem e projects. Things that are making the headlines now.

I worked on the conversion of Athabascan Tar Sands to energy. You know- the fuel from these sites is what is behind the Keystone XL pipeline that is (not) being built. But, is the subject of an international arbitration between the USA and TransCanada. (I’ve written about that problem here.)

And, I worked on energy storage. To be honest this is still a big problem. Because if we want to use solar energy, then we need to find a way to store energy so that it is available in the night (and on cloudy days) when there is no sun. The same problem exists with using wind energy- because we don’t always have sources of wind to create our power. (Just so you know, the research back then involved metal hydrides – you know them know as lithium batteries.)

And, I also worked on the conversion of water to hydrogen for fuel. Not for very long. Because my funding for the other projects came in time to let me work on what I really liked- biochemical and biomedical engineering. And, there’s a new development now in hydrogen fuel production that might have have actually caught my interest. (OK. It caught my interest now, some 4 decades later.)

First, a little background. Hydrogen power is available for transportation uses right now. Except it’s pretty expensive and limited in scope. As a matter of fact, there is a hydrogen fueling station right now in DC for a few buses and cars. (The hydrogen is available as compressed gas at 5000 and 10000 psi, as well as via liquid hydrogen.)

The problem is that pure hydrogen is not truly a natural chemical here on earth. Oh, sure, it’s everywhere in combined form. (You know, H2O. Water. Which is where we plan to obtain most of the hydrogen that will be converted to fuel.) But, electrolyzing water to produce hydrogen is pretty expensive- and uses copious quantities of fuel. Until now.

Drs Paul Jordan, Ethan Edwards, Megan Thielges, and Trevor Douglas (Indiana University). Dustin Patteron (University of Texas) , Kendall Saboda and Heini Miettinen (Montana State University), and Guatam Basu (Bose Institute of India) reported their new hydrogen concept in Nature Chemistry. Their paper, entitled Self-assembling biomolecular catalysts for hydrogen production, describes their efforts with modified hydrogenase, an enzyme.

They produced a nano-reactor that they claim is some 150 times more potent than the natural enzyme would be. Their material, P22-Hyd, is protected by the protein shell of a bacterial virus. And, the enzyme itself is derived from the common microbe Escherichia coli (from which they derive EcHydr-1 enzyme). (The P22 inthe moniker describes the bacterial virus protein sheath that is used.)

You should recall that many enzymes work both ways- as does this one- it can break down water to hydrogen and oxygen or afford their combination. So, it is either a fuel cell catalyst or it produces hydrogen. And, one of the key beauties of hydrogen fuels is the end product is water; the oxidation of hydrogen (which means it combines with oxygen) forms water.

Using the enzyme system they have developed means that that platinum is not needed- and the process is fully renewable. The enzyme is produced via fermentation and is biodegradable. Those facts makes this a far more attractive concept than the platinum process, the electrolysis reaction, even the conversion of biomass waste to hydrogen.

Share this: