Waste water plus bacteria make hydrogen

clipped from www.abc.net.au Deborah Zabarenko Bacteria that feed on vinegar and waste water zapped with a shot of electricity could produce a clean hydrogen fuel to power vehicles that now run on petrol, researchers report. It's a long way from powering a hydrogen car. But scientists have produced bubbles of hydrogen in a microbial fuel cell using vinegar and acid-loving bugs These so-called microbial fuel cells can turn almost any biodegradable organic material into zero-emission hydrogen gas fuel, says Professor Bruce Logan of Penn State University. This would be an environmental advantage over the current generation of hydrogen-powered cars, where the hydrogen is most commonly made from fossil fuels. Even though the cars themselves emit no greenhouse gases, the manufacture of their fuel does. In research published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Logan and colleague Dr Shaoan Cheng used naturally-occurring bacteria in an electrolysis cell with acetic acid, the acid found in vinegar.

Hydrogen at the moment, is generally produced from Hydrocarbons and can also produce greenhouse gases. The Bacteria produce hydrogen from vinegar in a way that is environmentally friendly,and is a method of using renewable organic material, It uses 10% of the energy that is used in Hydrolysis, where hydrogen is produced only using an electric current