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The Hydrogen Economy

Tuesday, 13th November 2007

Roger Highfield has a piece on a new method of generating hydrogen:

Now scientists have developed a method that relies on bacteria in a specially designed reactor that can efficiently produce hydrogen fuel from any type of biodegradable organic matter, so that a glorified compost heap could protentially provide an abundant source of the clean-burning energy.

Dr Shaoan Cheng and Prof Bruce Logan of Penn State University, Pennsylvania, devised a method of hydrogen production that relies on combining electron-generating bacteria and a small electrical charge in a "microbial electrolysis cell" to belch out hydrogen gas.

I have a feeling that something in there has been garbled a touch: "electron-generating bacteria"?

Still, the interesting part is that the process is energy generative: 288 percent more energy as hydrogen comes out than goes in to run the process. Quite how all of this will pan out is of course unknown, but this is good news about creating the most difficult part of the hydrogen economy. Getting the hydrogen itself. That it's a glorified compost heap also helps: even if we had a cheap source of hydrogen, there are still huge problems with its transport. So local generation and cheap is ideal.

What I think people miss (and I speak as someone whose day job is marginally involved with the field) is quite how far the rest of the work necessary for a hydrogen economy has progressed. Fuel cells, for example, are actually becoming cost efficient: those estimates that it would cost $100,000 for a power train for a car are now wildly over the top. If we can solve the fuel part, the getting the hydrogen part, then all of the other parts of the needed technolgies are pretty much in place.

Of course, I devoutly hope that the move to fuel cells will happen, but not simply because I'm some Gaia loving hippie Green. Rather, because one sub-type of fuel cells uses a product I sell (which is why we part-funded some research into that sub-type) and it would be rather interesting for world usage of that metal to go from the current 2 tonnes a year to 200 or so. Most interesting in fact.