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Posted on 07/08/2008 6:58:10 AM PDT by Red Badger
An ancient organism from the pit of a collapsed volcano may hold the key to tomorrow's hydrogen economy. Scientists from across the world have formed a team to unlock the process refined by a billions-year old archaea. The U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute will expedite the research by sequencing the hydrogen-producing organism for comparative genomics.
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
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...
Hydrogen ping!.........
Learning to control the mechanisms of life will have a bigger impact than controlling the atom....X1000.
But isn't water vapor an even bigger greenhouse gas?
The high temperature part of this may still mean that production of hydrogen still consumes more energy that the hydrogen product provides.
If the scientists are good, the by-product will be beer.
When the cellulose is broken down to produce the hydrogen, what happens to the carbon? For every Kilogram of hydrogen in cellulose, there is 7.2 kg of carbon.
Allow me to be the first to link this to the Tunguska Event of 1908.
I’d assume that the organism uses the carbon for building its own structure reproducing itself.............
Hydrogen bubbles in your beer?.........NO SMOKING!................
Well, they might be able to use the hydrogen to make beer fizzy, without carbonation. However, I suspect the desire is to produce large quantities of hydrogen for fuel cells.
Bingo!
Now suppose we produce Hydrogen by the quadzillion cubic foot per year. Some of that Hydrogen is going to escape, and go into the upper reaches of the atmosphere and even be lost into space, since it is so light. Then the oxygen that would normally be bound to that hydrogen will be left sitting around with nothing to do.
So, what is going to have a greater effect on life and the environment, elevated inert CO2 or hightly reactive Oxygen?
Did anyone figure the effect of all that new water vapor?
This guy's name even sounds like a digestive process....
Wow.
This is a highly significant finding.
Shhhh!!! You'll spoil all the fun!
Isn't water vapor the mother of all greenhouse gasses?
I would not make such an assumption.
It seems to me an article claiming a reduction in Carbon Dioxide output via this method would at least give a clue where the carbon goes.
If consumed by the organism, does it grow forever larger? Or does it cycle and die off. If it dies, what happens to the carbon as the organism breaks down.
This is the same fallacy of using trees as a carbon sink. Only if the lumber is harvest and forever kept intact is the carbon contained. If the wood eventually rots, the carbon is released as Carbon Dioxide.
The source of the Oxygen in cellulose is first pulled from the air and water. It is only cycling that which already exists.
YES!
Got to love the libs, every solution they have only makes the problems worse, yet it never stops them.
It isn’t hydrogen fusion, but it might be entertaining trying to build hydrogen farms inside volcanoes.
Liberalism always generates the exact opposite of its stated intent.
Keep an eye out for Penn and Teller. They should be coming around with a petition demanding the banning of dihydrogen monoxide emissions from new energy technologies in order to save the environment any day now.
Don’t go bringing physics into this - next thing you know stoichiometry and meteorology are going to make an appearance and render your water vapor argument null and void.
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“Hydrogen can be easily converted to electrical and mechanical energy without any production of carbon dioxide,”
No it just produces water vapor.... Which is the stronger ‘greenhouse agent’ again?
Yes A team of highly motivated scientist have looked into it and here is the issue:
1) Another Pulitzer for Al gore due to his article an inconvenient gas..
2) A grammy for the audio release of the afore mentioned book/report
3) An oscar for the series
4) a Golden globe for the TV series
5) 8 more concerts will be held to raise awareness
6) 3 acts of congress (2 will be non binding) againt ‘big-hydrogen’
Details.....Why bother with them?
Actually, since water vapor comes and goes fairly readily by condensation and precipitation, my guess is, the water vapor content of the atmosphere on a global scale would remain relatively constant. However, on a local level, the effect would be to raise temperatures, like in a city around a major highway.
But you do raise a good point since the water vapor effect is a major player that dwarfs CO2, and so it is ignored simply because it would illustrate just how small the CO2 effect is (let alone the relatively small human portion of the CO2 effect).
Hydrogen economy? That’s probably a long ways off.
Interesting article in the current “Skeptic” magazine.
Not available online, and I read it 2 months ago, but basically it said that it takes more energy to produce it than Hydrogen provides, and that the vehicle to transport it is something like 10,000 lbs, and can carry 1,000 lbs of Hydrogen. That’s not to say that the technology isn’t GOING to be developed, but it may be a while.
The article:
The Hydrogen Economy
Savior of humanity or
an economic black hole?
by Alice Friedemann
the rare archaeon:')
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“The Hydrogen Hoax”
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/id.132/article_detail.asp ;
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I can see some future Presidential candidate bemoaning our addiction to bacteria farts.
Thanks for the ping. This looks fascinating.
Yup, good ol’H2O vapor. We’ll have streets that clean themselves. Thats a great side effect that soon start cleansing the streets with the flow of water scouring old pollutants by burning hydrogen and releasing harmless water.
Yup, good ol’H2O vapor. We’ll have streets that clean themselves. Thats a great side effect that soon start cleansing the streets with the flow of water scouring old pollutants by burning hydrogen and releasing harmless water.
Not so harmless to my gravel hillside road... but hey, I live in Seattle. *\;-)
As long as it doesn't jack up the humidity, I'm okay with it... *\;-)
Thanks for the ping.
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