Natural Way of Splitting Water into Hydrogen and Oxygen

As we all know, hydrogen is a potential source of energy as an alternative to fossil fuels like oil and natural gas. Though clean and abundant fuel, hydrogen gas is very expensive to extract from water.

Aside from the conventional methods like electrolysis, and use of fuel cells and catalyst, scientists had discovered another natural way of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen. This is the use of green photosynthetic plants like algae. Algae usually grows under water and uses the carbon dioxide and sunlight, during photosynthesis, to produce its own nutrients and give off oxygen. But during darkness or/and the absence of oxygen, when photosynthesis isn’t occurring, an enzyme called hydrogenase takes into an alternative process to photosynthesis that produces small amount of hydrogen.

Since the algae production of hydrogen is minimal during darkness, it can be increase by employing a method called, “nutrient stress” to the algae during normal photosynthetic conditions. This is done by withholding sulfur which is critical in the normal photosynthetic process of algae. In the absence of sulfur, algae will stop emitting oxygen and storing energy. Instead, algae will began using an “alternative metabolic pathway” activating hydrogenase enzymes to split large amounts of hydrogen gas from water and releasing it as a by product.

The significant thing here is that the process may be cheap but require a further research and studies. This discovery could lead to the construction of process plants for the production of an abundant, cheap, and pollution free hydrogen fuel that will free us from the dependent from oil based fuel.

Category Filed in: Renewable Energy -