A Good Gas Attack: Hydrogen From E. Coli

A Good Gas Attack: Hydrogen From E. Coli

By John O'Dell January 31, 2008 The bacteria that helps us digest food – and can sometimes cause food poisoning -- may someday help us fuel our cars and produce energy for our homes.

Chemical engineering professor Thomas Wood at Texas A&M University has reengineered a strain of E. coli so that it now produces copious amounts of hydrogen from sugars.

There's still a lot of work to be done before anything commercial could come of the research, Wood said in an article on the university's news site.

But if ultimately successful his work could result in a relatively cheap method of producing hydrogen for stationary and automotive fuel cells.

Wood altered the bacteria, which naturally breaks down sugar -- or glucose – molecules so that the process can produce about 140 times more hydrogen gas than occurs naturally. Most hydrogen production today is done in an energy-intensive process that separates water into its constituent parts -- hydrogen and oxygen. It is expensive and requires a lot of electricity, which often is produced by a coal-burning power plant that give off lots of carbon dioxide and other environmentally harmful emissions.

Wood suggests in the article that his E. coli experiments could help change that by permitting hydrogen to be made directly from sugars in a biological process that doesn't require must outside energy.

In the process Wood and his team developed, the hydrogen gas can be captured as it bubbles up from the solution created as the E. coli breaks down the glucose molecules.

One big hurdle to overcome is that the process now requires 175 pounds of sugar to produce sufficient hydrogen to power the average home in the U.S. for one day. 

Wood said he'd like to be able to cut that by at least 90 percent, to 17 pounds or less.

He said the E. coli process could result in a method for producing hydrogen on-site, eliminating the need for large production plants and for long-distance transportation of the gas by railroad and in tank trucks.

The study is reported in the journal Microbial Biotechnology.

John O'Dell:  is an AutoObserver Senior Editor. Follow @AutoObserver on Twitter.