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Friday, 13 February 2004
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Manufacturing hydrogen like plants. Science magazine yesterday
express-published a paper that looks at how plants are able to split
water into hydrogen and oxygen. If we could replicate that process
artificially, it might provide a way to supply the hydrogen needed to
establish the much-touted "hydrogen economy".
As you probably already know, hydrogen is not an energy source as such
but a good means for transporting energy, in certain circumstances. The
big problem is that creating the hydrogen (for which there is no
natural "well") costs more energy than you will get back. In some
cases, you might still make some savings because of the potential
benefits of transporting energy as hydrogen rather than as fossil
fuels, etc., but that is still not practical.
Fundamentally, the energy that will create the hydrogen must come from
the sun if we want to make the process environmentally friendly. We
could use solar cells to collect the energy to run the electrolysis
process to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. Or we could do
things more directly and copy the process plants use to separate water.
The first step in this process is understanding exactly how plants do
it. That is the subject of the Science paper.
Abstract (sub required) | PDF (sub required) | Press release
[David Harris: Science news]
10:46:31 PM 
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© Copyright 2005 Peter Nixon.
Last update: 27/9/05; 9:20:15 PM.
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