It is clear that new ways of obtaining energy must be found, allowing once and for all to abandon fossil fuelWith. But it’s not easy. Getting more and more electrically driven deviceslike electric cars, but getting that electricity also means carbon emissions that need to be reduced as much as possible. The use of hydrogen has been studied for years, but there were many gaps that could now be solved thanks to bacteria that can generate electricity directly from the air.
What they do is they use it hydrogen from air. It does not occur in such a high proportion as other gases such as oxygen. However, they are so sensitive that it is enough for them to receive energy. For this reason, a group of scientists from Monash University studied some of these bacteria. Their goal was to unravel the mechanisms they use to generate electricity from hydrogen in the air. And they achieved it.
They do it with an enzyme call Hookwhich can be isolated and used to generate currents capable of power supply for various electrical appliancesWith. The study, which was published in Natureit is in a very early stage, but is already showing itself very promising.
Bacteria that get electricity from the air
Some soil bacteria are able to obtain energy from the air when they have no other resources. That is, in times of scarcity, when they have no other sources of energy, they can use hydrogen, which is found in small amounts in the air.
The procedure is simple. The hydrogen molecule is made up of two protons. That is, positively charged atoms. Both are interconnected by a link formed two electronswhose charge is negative.
If this bond is broken, the electrons go into something known as electron transport chain, which is used by bacteria for energy. But, if you think about it, what is generated is actually electricity.
For this reason, the authors of this study suggested that it would be interesting to replicate what happens inside these bacteria. So at the end of your own electron transport chain, you can put electrical device which will be powered by the resulting current. But first they needed to know how these molecules break down, so they decided to analyze the genome of one of those terrestrial bacteria: Mycobacterium smegmatis.
A small amount of hydrogen is enough
By analyzing the bacterial genome, these scientists found that for break hydrogen moleculesor an enzyme called hydrogenase. Enzymes are proteins that are used as tools to speed up and carry out certain reactions correctly. In this case, hydrogenase, also called Huc, breaks the bond connecting two hydrogen protons and releases electrons that will generate a current.
So the next step for these scientists was to find a way isolate hucso that it can be used without the presence of bacteria. It was necessary to genetically modify the bacteria in order to isolate the enzyme, but in the end they succeeded. It was of high quality and was also very stable as it could keep itself active. from -80°С to 80°С. More than a wide range.
It only remained to be seen if the enzyme outside the bacteria could also take advantage. a small amount of hydrogen. So it was. In fact, he was able to use levels of hydrogen so low that they could not be measured with a very sensitive device called a gas chromatograph.
So far, it has been contact with an enzyme. There are still many technical problems before getting electricity from it, but the road seems to be good.
Other applications
If Huc generates an electrical current by coming into contact with a small amount of hydrogen, it could have other uses besides power generation. In particular, it can be used for detect gas leak. Several study authors explained this in an article for Talk. However, they also insist that all this should be done in stages. For now, we have another tool to try and capitalize on hydrogen. Perhaps this is the key to getting that cleaner electricity we’ve been looking for.
Source: Hiper Textual
