Synthetic enzyme produces hydrogen cheaply
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Compressed hydrogen gas could be stored in tanks similar to the ones used to store compressed natural gas.
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October 15, 1999
Web posted at: 3:00 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT)
Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe and the Hubble Space Telescope has captured pillars of it. Yet, scientists struggle to produce a cheap supply of hydrogen gas.
Scientists have created a synthetic enzyme that produces hydrogen fuel, a breakthrough that could move the world closer to an energy-efficient, hydrogen-based economy.
Even though hydrogen is the most common element in the universe, scientists have struggled to develop a process for producing an inexpensive and abundant supply of hydrogen gas.
Current manufacturing processes, such as electrolysis and the catalytic stripping of hydrogens from hydrocarbons, are both costly and inefficient. Electrolysis, for example, uses platinum, which costs $500 an ounce.
"Fortunately, nature has already solved the problem by designing numerous
microorganisms that efficiently make or use hydrogen in support of their metabolic activities," said Thomas Rauchfuss, a chemistry professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.
Rauchfuss and his colleagues are on a quest to understand how this natural process works. Last year, scientists announced the chemical structures of two hydrogen-producing enzymes and Rachfuss' team went to their lab to make a synthetic version.
The enzymes work at room temperature in water and make hydrogen fuel by stripping hydrogen from hydrocarbons using iron catalysts, said Rachfuss.
To date, they have created a synthetic version of one of the enzymes. However, their version just contains 25 atoms, whereas the real version contains thousands. As a result, their version works for a bit and then stops.
"Nature has a little battery attached to its catalysts and we don't, so we are trying to make a second generation enzyme mimic with a similar little battery attached," Rachfuss said in an email interview.
The scientists hope to have a synthetic enzyme that produces hydrogen non-stop within a few years. "My guess is that we will not quite match the nature system's efficiency," he said.
A paper on this research will appear in a few weeks in the Journal of the American Chemical Society,.
Copyright 1999, Environmental News Network, All Rights Reserved
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Thomas B. Rauchfuss
Journal of the American Chemical Society
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