Steve,
There's a lot of research going on now with several organic approaches.
There's Nobel prizewinner Hamilton Smith's team at the JCVI, Rockville,
Maryland trying to hybridize a photosynthetic bacterium with a H-producing
bacterium so that the energy from the former drives the latter. In Sweden
they've discovered a new super bacterium (Caldicellulosiruptor) which emits
twice as much hydrogen than any other discovered so far. Then, rather like
the titanium oxide-coated leaf approach of your link, a team at MIT are
using an iridium oxide-virus complex on which to build organic
photosynthetic units.
It wasn't until only five or six years ago when Craig Venter started taking
ocean samples that a whole new ecosystem was discovered -- in the top
1/100of an inch of sea water -- containing scores of thousands of different
types of bacteria that hadn't been known before. Almost all are big
consumers of CO2 and some of them are emitters of H.
The potential is immense -- and the need for H is immense -- so I reckon
that bacterial production of H will swing into high gear in the next decade
or so with large production facilities. But they will need large quantities
of water and this will necessarily expropriate a great deal of water that's
presently used for intensive food production.
Keith
At 10:37 15/04/2010 -0400, you wrote:
Wonder what the EROEI will look like if they ever get it working on a
practical basis. Sounds pretty labor intensive at this point.
Steve
<http://www.world-science.net/othernews/100326_leaf>http://www.world-science.net/othernews/100326_leaf
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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
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