New Highly Efficient Hydrogen-making Process Developed to Fuel Car Engines

A new process that is said to be highly efficient in producing hydrogen (from plant sugars) has been developed to cheaply power vehicles with a hydrogen fuel cell. The new process was presented here in New Orleans at the 2008 National Meeting of the American Chemical Society.

The study titled "Complete conversion of carbohydrate and water to hydrogen and carbohydrate dioxide by a synthetic enzymatic pathway" was presented by Dr. Percival Zhang, lead researcher from the Virginia Tech University. Dr. Zhang is a biochemical engineer.

Assistants to this presentation were very excited about the new process to produce much needed alternative fuel hydrogen to power up car's engines. The new process is said to be highly efficient, cheap, could be widely available, and do not leave any contaminants on the environment.

The new process is called "synthetic biology." It is basically a replication of what nature does on the lab. The basis of the new process is the complete conversion of carbohydrate and water to hydrogen. This is done efficiently, much more efficient than current hydrogen-producing methods.

Dr. Zhang said here that the new process is basically taking some starch and water and, under controlled conditions, add some 13 biologically active compounds (enzymes) that completely degrade the starch to hydrogen. The process is so efficient, according to the presenter that leaves practically no contaminants.

Percival emphasized through his presentation that they have found the most promising hydrogen-producing system to date from plant sugars (starches, actually).

The cocktail of enzymes was not disclosed (we supposed it will be patented to make some money from it) but we can speculate that amylases (enzymes that brake starch to sugars), fermentation enzymes (that degrade sugars) into carbon dioxide and hydrogen (with no carbon monoxide production).

Hydrogen production is recognized by experts in the energy field as an alternative to fossil fuels. Current commercial production methods are highly inefficient with low yields of hydrogen production. Researchers have been working for sometime to produce hydrogen from renewable and easily available resources. This may be the case with this new process since water and starch are two "raw" materials available worldwide.

At one point of the presentation Zhang was so enthusiastic that he even said that his work was "revolutionary." I would not go that far but certainly it is an interesting new technology. In fact, it is so interesting that another readily available raw material, cellulose, could be easily used to produce hydrogen. Of course some changes will be needed in the original process since cellulose is a different material (did you know that the only difference between starch and cellulose is the orientation of one chemical bond?)

Although the presentation was very excited about producing efficiently hydrogen from starch and water some obstacles need to be addressed. For example from where are we going to obtain the immense amounts of starches needed to produce enough hydrogen to power the millions of cars we use in our society?

The prospect of having a new process to produce hydrogen in a cheap and efficient way hydrogen from simple materials such as water, starch, cellulose, etc is certainly welcomed by the ever hungry energy-dependant worldwide society.

SOURCE:

Zhang et al. 2008. Complete conversion of carbohydrate and water to hydrogen and carbohydrate dioxide by a synthetic enzymatic pathway. 235^th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society. New Orleans. Presentation FUEL 213

URL: http://oasys2.confex.com/acs/235nm/techprogram/P1167818.HTM