Blatant Reality

Washington University Researcher Himadri Pakrasi and fellow scientists are studying strains of cyanobacteria (also known as blue-green algae) and have discovered a strain that can produce 10 times as much hydrogen as the nearest competitor.

Here is a little background on this discovery as well as the overall process of how algae produce hydrogen:

The soup is colored by a strain of blue-green bacteria that bubble off roughly 10 times the hydrogen gas produced by their nearest competitors—in part because of their unique genetic endowment but also in part because of tricks the scientists have played on their metabolism.

Hydrogen gas can be produced by microbes that have enzymes called hydrogenases that take two hydrogen ions and bind them together. Although the soup microbes have hydrogenases, most of the hydrogen they evolve is a byproduct instead of an exceptionally efficient nitrogenase, an enzyme that converts the nitrogen in air to a nitrogen-containing molecule the microbes can use.

The microbe’s gas-producing feat is described in December 14,2010 issue of the online journal Nature Communications.

Biohydrogen, like that bubbling up from the microbial soup, is one of the most appealing renewable energy fuels. Produced by splitting water with energy from the sun, it releases mostly water when it burns. It’s hard to get any cleaner than that.

The strain growing in the Roux bottles in the cabinet, called Cyanothece 51142 was originally found in the Gulf of Mexico by Louis A. Sherman of Purdue University, one of the article’s authors. Its genes were sequenced in 2008 at the Genome Sequencing Center at the School of Medicine.

Pretty awesome news and it will be interesting to see what this kind of research leads if/when it intersects with developments done by companies like OriginOil.

Over the summer, LA based algae biofuel technology company OriginOil announced that it had developed a system to produce hydrogen from seemingly any species algae. Their method was different from any others up until this point in the effect that the algae could produce “biomass, oil, and hydrogen” at the same time using sunlight as its sole energy input.

Yesterday, OriginOil announced that their Hydrogen Harvester can produce “hydrogen energy corresponding to a solar energy conversion efficiency of about 12 percent continuously for several hours on a partially clouded day.” By comparison, photovoltaic cells have solar energy conversion rates anywhere between 6 and 20 percent.

This means that currently, their system that has only been around for a couple months can produce energy from a solar source at rates that are comparable to current solar cell technologies, a field that has been around for several decades. If efficiencies like these have been reached in a couple months, the potential for continued improvements to the energy conversion efficiencies in their system is definitely there.

The additional benefit of this system is that the energy comes in the form of a potential fuel (hydrogen) and the system could potentially hold the key to the future of a renewable hydrogen market.

From their press release, OriginOil’s Chief Technology Officer gives some added insight on what this announcement means:

Brian Goodall, OriginOil’s CTO, said: “Our experiments clearly demonstrate that this technology can generate renewable hydrogen at rates that matter to the global economy. These early rates compare well with those of the more mature solar cell industry, with the added benefit that the fuel, hydrogen, is readily storable. This is the first renewable source for today’s $39 billion hydrogen market.”

OriginOil has had several exciting announcements over the years, including selling some of products to the energy company MBD in Australia. However, the Hydrogen Harvester is by far the most exciting news out of this company yet for it has the potential not only to change the algae industry, but the hydrogen industry as well.

Hydrogen is often hailed as the ultimate alternative fuel but many problems from high production costs to inefficient storage methods need to be resolved first. However, even if all the problems involving the development of a hydrogen economy were fixed today, it would still be several decades before a hydrogen infrastructure would be in place that compared to our current petroleum infrastructure.

That is why alternatives like algae biofuels that can run in our current engines and can be used in the current infrastructure are being looked at in the near-long term future.

As mentioned before, one of the major roadblocks on the road to a hydrogen economy is the cost to produce hydrogen. If hydrogen is to become a viable fuel source, it will need to be produced cheaply. This is where an announcement by an algae technology company last week may bring the production problem one-step closer to a solution.

OriginOil, a Los Angeles based algae oil technology company, issued a press release stating that they had developed a “Hydrogen Harvester” that cheaply collects hydrogen molecules given off by algae.

This announcement could prove significant for both the hydrogen and algae fuel sectors. First off, the idea of using algae to produce hydrogen has been around for a while. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has been looking at various techniques to stimulate hydrogen production in algae. However, up until this point, most of these methods were in some way detrimental to the health of algal cell.

OriginOil’s process, on the other hand, does not seem to harm the algae. In fact, their process allows the algae to produce oil, biomass, AND hydrogen simultaneously. In a 2005 NREL document titled “New Horizons for Hydrogen – Producing Hydrogen from Renewable Resources”, researchers said that if photosynthetic microorganism production of hydrogen became feasible, it would truly be “the ‘Holy Grail’ of the hydrogen economy.”

With this announcement, it’s possible that this could be the “Holy Grail” many hydrogen researchers have been looking for, a discovery that has many at OriginOil excited.

“I honestly do feel that we have a landmark discovery here,” said Brain Goodall, Chief Technology Officer of OriginOil. “[Our method] is something that as far as I can tell, no one has looked at before and the reason that we did is because we have some very creative, hands-on people.”

While expectedly guarded on details, the basic process would take any species of algae growing in either a bioreactor or open ponds and run the still living algae through the “Hydrogen Harvester”. There, in a process that OriginOil is currently working on patenting, the algae would release hydrogen to be collected.

“We’re using the same algae and the same sunlight [to] produce biomass, oil, and hydrogen,” Goodall explained. “We think that with this breakthrough discovery, further development and scale ups could lead to a situation where you are using completely ‘green’ hydrogen… [all] coming from sunlight.”

As hinted at before, the species of algae also does not seem to be a factor in whether or not hydrogen can be produced using OriginOil’s process.

“As far as we have seen to date, it should work with any algae,” Goodall explained.

With this technology not being reliant on specific species of algae, OriginOil is looking to make sure that their harvester system will have “plug & play” capabilities where it can be incorporated into almost any algae production process, be it open ponds, bioreactors, or otherwise.

As for the quantity of hydrogen that can be produce, the exact amount has yet to be seen and will most likely depend on the species of algae as well as growth factors like exposure to sunlight. However, Goodall is very optimistic that the amounts will be significant and that the process should be scalable without too many problems.

“Right now, it looks like a lot of hydrogen is coming out [of the algae] and the rate of production seems to be pretty constant over several hours. The algae aren’t dying and are remaining viable and robust [plus] we are not putting any energy in and hydrogen is coming out.”

Goodall clarified that additional energy is involved in the process since the algae still needs to be moved throughout the Hydrogen Harvester system. However, all the energy needed for the algae to actually produce the hydrogen can be obtained freely from the sun.

While using hydrogen produced from this method for transportation would still be a long way off, it can actually help in the immediate future with the production of algae biofuels. To produce algae biodiesel or biofuel, the oil needs to be hydrotreated using hydrogen. Currently, hydrogen would either have to be shipped to algae production facilities or the raw algae oils would have to be taken to where the hydrogen is (most likely at other refineries). The production of hydrogen onsite will allow for some flexibility in where the refining of algal oils take place as well as offer some cost-cutting abilities.

Overall, this breakthrough offers the potential to leapfrog both the hydrogen and algae industries forward. With OriginOil being an algae technology company and not an actual algae producer, whatever technology they create will be available to market to the industry as a whole. Therefore, a discovery like this has the potential to be benefit not just one company, but the entire algae biofuel industry.

Originally posted at Celsias.com

It will be interesting to hear some more details on how this whole process works. Even for a company press release, OriginOil is pretty vague on how the process will work and where exactly the hydrogen is coming from. For example, is the algae actively producing it during growth or is the hydrogen a bi-product of oil extraction process? Can this process work on all algae strains or just a specific few? Does the algae have to be grown within a bioreactor (one specifically of OriginOil design) or can if be grown in ponds as well?

These are some questions that I will probably be asking in the next couple of days. In the meantime, check out the entire OriginOil press release:

OriginOil Announces Breakthrough Hydrogen Harvester Invention
New technology taps hydrogen generated by living algae

Los Angeles, CA July 8, 2010 – OriginOil, Inc. (OOIL), the developer of a breakthrough technology to transform algae, the most promising source of renewable oil, into a true competitor to petroleum, today announced a new invention that generates hydrogen from living algae, providing an additional energy source from bioreactors. In contrast to previously reported developments in the area, the new Hydrogen Harvester™ uses little or no external energy inputs, requires no sulfur deprivation or other “stressing” of the algae, and no genetic modification. The process employs viable, high growth rate, high oil content algae strains.

“One of the primary challenges for algae production is to achieve the best-possible energy balance,” said Riggs Eckelberry, OriginOil CEO. “By harvesting hydrogen from algae we are able to increase the energy output of virtually any algae production system. The result is a photosynthetic technology platform that yields energy in the form of oil, biomass, and hydrogen.”

Algae already create oxygen through photosynthesis. Recovering hydrogen provides the necessary ingredients for electricity generation using fuel cells. The energy can be used to offset the electricity requirements of algae cultivation, harvesting and downstream processing.

Dr. Brian Goodall, OriginOil’s new CTO, commented: “The co-generation of hydrogen at the algae production site is a critical development for the realization of a completely integrated algal biorefinery. All routes from algae to ‘drop-in’ fuels such as renewable diesel and jet fuel require hydrogen and hydrotreating. The Hydrogen Harvester technology would eliminate the need for hydrogen pipelines and dependence on existing refineries which are typically far removed from ideal sites for algae growth.”

The Hydrogen Harvester will be integrated into OriginOil’s existing portfolio of algae growth technologies, including the recently announced MultiReactor™. It will also be available as an add-on to other industry growth systems.

The company recently filed for patent protection of the new hydrogen harvesting technology, its tenth patent application, entitled “Bio Energy Reactor”. While the invention is applicable to any photosynthetic organism, algae is thought to be most productive.

Hydrogen has often been called the perfect fuel. Its major reserve on earth (water) is inexhaustible, meaning that we will never run out of hydrogen. Hydrogen, if produced cleanly, efficiently and affordably from renewable resources, is the ultimate green energy solution: It produces no air pollutants or greenhouse gases when used in fuel cells and the only pollutants generated when burned in internal combustion engines are nitrogen oxides (NOx).

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has stated that producing hydrogen by direct water-splitting technologies — using photosynthetic microorganisms — is the “Holy Grail” of the hydrogen economy, the ultimate clean and sustainable hydrogen production method, and is the focus of long-term R&D efforts at NREL. OriginOil believes that the new Hydrogen Harvester could represent the breakthrough needed to power the hydrogen economy.

A new catalyst has been developed that separates the Oxygen from a water molecule. The hope is that with this cheap catalysts, researchers will be able to develop a way for the sun to power the necessary reaction, thus creating a new, sustainable source of energy.

Daniel Nocera, a professor of chemistry at MIT, has developed a catalyst that can generate oxygen from a glass of water by splitting water molecules. The reaction frees hydrogen ions to make hydrogen gas. The catalyst, which is easy and cheap to make, could be used to generate vast amounts of hydrogen using sunlight to power the reactions. The hydrogen can then be burned or run through a fuel cell to generate electricity whenever it’s needed, including when the sun isn’t shining.

 

Solar power is ultimately limited by the fact that the solar cells only produce their peak output for a few hours each day. The proposed solution of using sunlight to split water, storing solar energy in the form of hydrogen, hasn’t been practical because the reaction required too much energy, and suitable catalysts were too expensive or used extremely rare materials. Nocera’s catalyst clears the way for cheap and abundant water-splitting technologies.

 

Nocera’s advance represents a key discovery in an effort by many chemical research groups to create artificial photosynthesis–mimicking how plants use sunlight to split water to make usable energy. “This discovery is simply groundbreaking,” says Karsten Meyer, a professor of chemistry at Friedrich Alexander University, in Germany. “Nocera has probably put a lot of researchers out of business.” For solar power, Meyer says, “this is probably the most important single discovery of the century.”

However, this still doesn’t solve all the problems with using hydrogen as a fuel. Another catalyst needs to be developed to create hydrogen ions that is cheaper than the current platinum ones used.

Nocera created the catalyst as part of a research program whose goal was to develop artificial photosynthesis that works more efficiently than photosynthesis and produces useful fuels, such as hydrogen. Nocera has solved one of the most challenging parts of artificial photosynthesis: generating oxygen from water. Two more steps remain. One is replacing the expensive platinum catalyst for making hydrogen from hydrogen ions with a catalyst based on a cheap and abundant metal, as Nocera has done with the oxygen catalyst.

 

Finding a cheaper catalyst for making hydrogen shouldn’t be too difficult, says John Turner, a principal investigator at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, in Golden, CO. Indeed, Nocera says that he has promising new materials that might work, and other researchers also have likely candidates. The second remaining step in artificial photosynthesis is developing a material that absorbs sunlight, generating the electrons needed to power the water-splitting catalysts. That will allow Nocera’s catalyst to run directly on sunlight; right now, it runs on electricity taken from an outlet.

While this is definitely a promising step in the right direction, I wouldn’t hold my breath until they will discover the necessary catalyst.

There is a lot of talk now-a-days about how hydrogen fuel cell cars are going to be the newest and best thing of the future to help stop global warming and such. The whole idea of the this new fuel cell idea seems brilliant when you first look at it because the proposed source of hydrogen would be one of the most abundant molecules on earth (water) and the only emissions of these vehicles would be water vapor.

However, the scientists that are all up in arms about how global warming are the very ones that seem to be missing a very key fact about the whole greenhouse gas deal. Contrary to what you have learned, via the media or in school, water vapor is actually the number one greenhouse gas.

Water vapor in the troposphere is the biggest contributor to greenhouse gas warming.

Following water vapor, the next highest greenhouse gas contributor is methane with carbon dioxide a distant third.

Now, you would think that if water vapor is THE biggest contributor to greenhouse gas warming, we wouldn’t want to put any more into the environment than we already have. Yet environmentalist are constantly proclaiming hydrogen fuel cell cars as “zero-emission” vehicles.

Unlike many of the hybrid and “green” cars currently on the market, hydrogen cars offer the promise of zero emission technology, where the only byproduct from the cars is water vapor. Current fossil-fuel burning vehicles emit all sorts of pollutants such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, ozone and microscopic particulate matter. Hybrids and other green cars address these issues to a large extent but only hydrogen cars hold the promise of zero emission of pollutants. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that fossil-fuel automobiles emit 1 ½ billion tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere each year and going to hydrogen-based transportation would all but eliminate this.

It’s weird how the EPA supports hydrogen fuel cell technology when water vapor is such a major factor in the greenhouse gas warming.

The overlaps complicate things, but it’s clear that water vapour is the single most important absorber (between 36% and 66% of the greenhouse effect), and together with clouds makes up between 66% and 85%. CO₂ alone makes up between 9 and 26%, while the O₃ and the other minor GHG absorbers consist of up to 7 and 8% of the effect, respectively. The remainders and uncertainties are associated with the overlaps which could be attributed in various ways that I’m not going to bother with here. Making some allowance (+/-5%) for the crudeness of my calculation, the maximum supportable number for the importance of water vapour alone is about 60-70% and for water plus clouds 80-90% of the present day greenhouse effect.

Man, if water vapor is such a big contributor now with us just burning fuel products, imagine how big of a contributor it will be if we intentionally make it through “zero-emission” hydrogen cars.

I know there are those of you out there that will tell me that our potential affect on the water cycle will be miniscule and you may very well be right. But if you use this argument, don’t expect me to listen to you when you start going on about how we are the cause of global warming because of our carbon emissions. If we can affect the global climate in one aspect than we can surly affect it in another.

So even after that rant, I’m going to shock you a little. I’m actually in favor of hydrogen based fuel cell technology. The reason for this is that if the fact that these cars aren’t technically “zero-emission” is recognized, then things can be done to fix it. Things such as a way to capture and condense the vapor then release it as a liquid would be just one suggestion. The potential for a virtually limitless fuel source is just too good to pass up.

Anyways, I’m not a scientist, but if you are, feel free to chip in your two sense worth/tear this article to pieces in the comment section.