Breakthrough #1: MIT created a virus that will break apart water molecules to isolate hydrogen from the oxygen. This works at 400% efficiency compared to current techniques. Enzymes/viruses are amazing biological machines and require little energy to keep running. However... they need to harness this without somehow infecting the world's water supply with it. Not sure exactly under what conditions the virus can operate, but the potential is there.
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A team of researchers at MIT has just announced that they have successfully modified a virus to split apart molecules of water, paving the way for an efficient and non-energy intensive method of producing hydrogen fuel. The team engineered a common, harmless bacterial virus to assemble the components needed to crack apart a molecule of water, yielding a fourfold boost in efficiency over similar processes.
Hydrogen has a lot of potential as an alternative fuel – it can be used in fuel cells to trigger a chemical reaction that generates carbon-free electricity, and the only byproducts are waste heat and water. However as of right now, most methods of generating hydrogen are either extremely energy intensive or utilize methane and release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Taking inspiration from the way that plants use sunlight to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, the MIT team led by Angela Belcher genetically engineered a virus called M13 to act as a sort of “scaffolding” structure that enables a remarkably efficient hydrogen-producing chemical reaction. When introduced to a catalyst (iridium oxide) and a biological pigment (zinc porphyrins), the viruses formed wire-like structures that efficiently split water into oxygen and hydrogen. The pigment captures light from the sun, and the catalyst splits the molecule.
Breakthrough #2: RPI created a new material, graphene, which stores hydrogen leaps and bounds more efficiently than any other material currently known, far surpassing the 2015 Department of Energy's target goal for storage capacity, a full 5 years ahead of schedule.
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Hydrogen storage has proven to be a significant bottleneck to the advancement and proliferation of fuel cell and hydrogen technologies in cars, trucks, and other applications. Rafiee has developed a new method for manufacturing and using graphene, an atom-thick sheet of carbon atoms arranged like a nanoscale chain-link fence, to store hydrogen. His solution is inexpensive and easy to produce.
With adviser and Rensselaer Professor Nikhil Koratkar, Rafiee used a combination of mechanical grinding, plasma treatment, and annealing to engineer the atomic structure of graphene to maximize its hydrogen storage capacity. This new graphene has exhibited a hydrogen storage capacity of 14 percent by weight at room temperature – far exceeding any other known material.
This 14-percent capacity surpasses the U.S. Department of Energy 2015 target of realizing a material with hydrogen storage capacity of 9 percent by weight at room temperature. Rafiee said his graphene is also one of the first known materials to surpass the Department of Energy’s 2010 target of 6 percent.
Rafiee’s graphene exhibits three critical attributes that result in its unique hydrogen storage capacity. The first is high surface area. Graphene’s unique structure, only one atom thick, means that each of its carbon atoms is exposed to the environment and, in turn, to the hydrogen gas. The second attribute is low density. Graphene has one of the highest surface area-per-unit masses in nature, far superior to even carbon nanotubes and fullerenes.
Looks like hydrogen has a chance, after all. Discuss.
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