Fossil fuel reserves and clean fuel for the future
The development of a clean, sustainable and economically viable energy supply for the future is one of the most urgent challenges of our generation, given that oil production will peak in 5-17 years time. There is now a concerted international effort to switch from a fossil fuel to a Hydrogen economy.
In this project, a green algal system that uses solar energy to split water (H2O) into Hydrogen (H2) and oxygen (O2), will be refined for large scale H2 production. Subsequent combustion of H2 yields only H2O, eliminating both net H2O use and the production of harmful greenhouse gases, associated with the burning of fossil fuels.
Such algal bioreactors have the added economic benefit that they use photosynthesis to extract carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and so are of interest in terms of global carbon trading. Additional financial benefits are linked with the bulk extraction of photosynthetic pigments, many of which are oxygen free radical scavengers with potential neutroceutical or cancer treatment properties. The biomass generated can itself be used as a fuel for electricity generation or biomass gasification. The identification of marine algae capable of producing H2 has the added benefit that H2 production could be coupled with H2O purification, as the product of H2 combustion is pure H2O.
Biosolar hydrogen production with Chlamydomonas reinhardtii cultures in test reactors
Background
Detailed and widely accepted calculations predict that global oil production will peak between 2007-2038 and that economically viable oil reserves will be largely depleted between 2030-2050. At the point of peak production, in 5-35 years time, supply and demand constraints are likely to dictate a rapid increase in oil price with potentially damaging economic consequences. The later predictions (i.e. 2038 peak production, 2050 depletion) are partly based on the assumption that new oil fields will be found, though the US Geological Survey found that the rates of discovery of new oil fields peaked in 1962 and has been declining ever since. This may explain why the US government is seriously looking into the option of extracting oil from Alaskan oil fields, despite predictions indicating that at the current rate of consumption they will only yield sufficient economically recoverable oil for 1 year. Population growth and economic development increases the pressure on global oil reserves further. For example, if China and India were to increase their energy consumption to the relatively modest per capita level of South Korea, these two countries alone would need additional oil supplies almost equivalent to 50% of the world's entire oil consumption, in the year 2000.
Given the above, a likely scenario will be that oil supply will peak between 2007-2020 (7-17 years from now). As a result, there is now intense pressure to initiate a gradual and controlled switch away from an oil based economy towards an alternative and preferably clean and sustainably produced fuel of the future.
In this project we use Wild Type (wt) and high H2 producing mutants of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii developed, to address the main rate limiting steps of algal H2 production. These rate-limiting steps are:
- Light capture efficiency
- O2 inhibition of the HydA Hydrogenase
- H+ and e- transfer from plastoquinone (PQ) to the HydA Hydrogenase
In addition we conduct a search for alternative marine algae and cyanobacterial H2 producers, to couple H2 production with H2O purification.
Chlamydomonas reinhardtii is often referred to as the ‘green yeast’ of the plant world as genetic manipulation processes are so well developed for this organism and because its genome has been sequenced. Recently we submitted a patent application for a High H2 Producing Mutant (HHPM1) of Chlamydomonas rheinhardtii in which a specific mitochondrial gene was knocked out. HHPM1 was shown to produce H2 at rates 6-15x that of the wt. Further, analysis revealed that HHPM1 has a number of specific characteristics related to improved H2 production.
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