ARTICLES
Stimulus Material for depth studies, courtesy of Macquarie University (continued)
Bugs’ burps for efficient hydrogen production
Bacteria that turn sugar into hydrogen are being engineered by Macquarie University researchers who received
a $1.1 million grant from ARENA, the Australian government’s renewable energy agency.
“There’s global interest in using hydrogen gas to produce electricity in hydrogen fuel cells, for example to
power vehicles, heat buildings or provide electricity for industry,” says Robert Willows (Department of Molecular
Sciences), who is one of the project leaders. “It’s a clean and efficient energy source.”
While 95 per cent of the hydrogen used worldwide currently is produced from fossil fuels, increasingly people
are looking at how to produce hydrogen from renewables.
“A lot of recent research efforts are focused on using electrolysis to produce hydrogen by splitting water
molecules into oxygen and hydrogen,” says Louise Brown, co-leader of the project. “They’re doing this by
using electricity generated from solar and wind.” “Other people are taking a biological route, and tweaking
photosynthesis in algae to produce hydrogen.”
“We think we can use genetically engineered bacteria—in our case E. coli—which will be able to eat glucose
produced from renewable sources likes sugar cane and cereals,” says Louise. “We’ll also be looking at other
low-cost carbohydrate feedstocks as well.”
“The aim of our project is to design a system that produces hydrogen relatively rapidly and at yields that are
commercially viable,” says Robert. “The bacterial approach has many advantages over hydrogen from algae,
including that it doesn’t need large open ponds.”
“Even in the lab we can produce enough hydrogen in a day from a few spoonfuls of sugar, to produce enough
energy to charge your mobile phone for up to two weeks,” says Louise.
The researchers, from Macquarie University’s Department of Molecular Sciences, have teamed up with BOC
Australia and Bioplatforms Australia on the project.
Find out more
Syllabus link: Science Extension - possible project direction
FACULTY OF SCIENCE
AND ENGINEERING
16
SCIENCE EDUCATIONAL NEWS VOL 67 NO 4